tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991Fri, 09 Dec 2016 14:22:49 +0000UC administrationdirect actioncops pigs murderersprivatizationoccupationsolidaritybudgetregentsfees / tuitionstrikepublic spaceanti-conductausteritypropagandastudent conductviolenceyudofpropertydisrupt everythingstateworkersmediaracismwe objectwheelerkangaroo courtsblack tie affairsconstructionunionPolicing Your Way Out Of A Crisisfearmarch 4facultyfree speechmeisterdemocracy"Violence" and "Nonviolence"cooptationhella occupy oaklandlibrariesdebtnovember 2010occupy calabolish itterrorbobby bnovember 2009precarityOccupy Wall Streetmarch 2011hunger strikethe ledgebay of ragedaviselectoral bullshithealth and safetyprisonstransparencyuprGSI strikeUC Davisbannersbook blocdance partieslive weekInstitutional RacismGeneral Strikebehind every tuition increase a line of riot copscsuCapital ProjectsViolent Technocratschileoctober 7student debttolman880/980FinancializationcartographysurveillancewisconsinAdministrative Propagandabanksbureaucratic impunityday1durant hallhigh schoollong march to sacramentomusical interludespainukHistory of the Militarization of Campus PoliceHow To Win Friends And Manage PeopleLegal InformationOEPolice MurderPolice and Administrative "Accountability"Unrestricted Tuition FountainYour Debt Is Armedasucbuenos airesgeneral assemblyoccupy everything"Not Non-Violent Civil Disobedience"15 Minutes of Fame for the Postracial EraAnti-PrivatizationAntiracismBARTEducation StrikeNeoliberal RacismPublic vs Private GoodsThe Free Speech Movement 40 Years LaterUCRcorruptiondebt rating agenciesgendergentrificationitalykatehiknow your enemypolitical chargesquan landreynoso/krollriotsfsushield your booksCivil DisobedienceCoalitional PoliticsCrowded OutDebt AbolitionEpic public relations failFree Speech Zones 10 Miles AwayFreedom of Assembly For Events Which Don't Make Us Look BadFreedom of Assembly For Non-Political Events OnlyGo BearsImmigrationOpen UniversityPrivate DonorsRegulation and ReformRightsSeeing Like A StateStaffStudentsThe Politics of White ResentmentWhat Makes Dean Edley Possible?William Brattona public dialogue with the unelected and unrecallableantipoliticscorporatizationcracks in the movement?criminalizationdavis dozenfor-profitsgreeceinternet pipe dreamsmarch 1mrakneoliberalismno cops no bossesnov 9occupy the farmoscar grantoutsourcing legal repressionpepper spraysegregated schoolsshorterstructures of administrationthe fucking bake saleuva"out-organizing"$401960s NostalgiaAdministrative PolicyAmerica's Port Truck DriversBFABacklashBay Area BSBoomer LiberalismCTUCUCFACasualizationCat CancerChilean Student MovementCivil Rights BacklashCoalitionCoexistCollateral DamageCoordinated West Coast Port ShutdownCross-SectoralDREAM ActDebt PeonageDeprivatizationDone WaitingEfficient-Market HypothesisFictitious CapitalFor Safer CampusesFor-Profit EducationFree Trade CoffeeHigher Ed BubbleHyperexploitationJeff ChangJob RetrainingJuana María RodríguezKroll Security GroupLiberal Multicultural CapitalismM1GSMacing DissentMili-tentsMismanagementOccupy DenverPPRBPeace PolicePenal StatePredatory LendingPut Down The Chalk Or We'll ShootQueer LatinidadScapegoating Communities of ColorSelective OutrageSpin ControlStay InformedStay SafeTroy DavisUAWUCBUnemploymentUniversity of PhoenixWalkoutWall Street By The WaterfrontWe Come In PeaceWorsening Exploitationalan bluefordblue n goldconflicts of interestcourt supportdebtors' assembliesdemand nothingdiversity of tacticsegyptflow charts ftwghosts in the machinehouse of cardslaborlibyalines of caremontrealmove-in daynon-affiliatesphantom walkoutsprison industrial complexquebecreportbackresourcessandwichesscrew us and we multiplyself-organizationsmall victoriesspokescounciltang centertunisiauclaucsduniversity as integrated repressive apparatusvolcanoeswe are the crisisyou can goreclaim UCprovisional home of the College of Debtors in Defiancehttp://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (d)Blogger651125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-1429412607995765437Mon, 15 Jun 2015 15:38:00 +00002015-06-15T08:56:13.066-07:00In the Regents We Trust? How Autonomy Put Tenure on the Chopping Block<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-daef51c6-f7d8-15be-1068-4f0a008f5748" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Guest post by Lenora Hanson and Elsa Noterman</i> </span></div><div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-daef51c6-f7d8-15be-1068-4f0a008f5748" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-daef51c6-f7d8-15be-1068-4f0a008f5748" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-daef51c6-f7db-160f-d9b9-d89f555b66de" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="JFC Omnibus copy.jpg" height="389px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/XJF_cxlqks-xrmV9Ib12iyAJQwAO_iOgM3ADZ3MG1o7dv24MlOrpBvzOjM6D0HcfYnSoHSuuE_htr8t1ILI4oM_RQ_xg0EhZvpfBLTBr0rVVet_pKlt9iKzBNV7ITx_CpfYNNg" style="border: medium none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="544px;" /></span></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-daef51c6-f7d8-15be-1068-4f0a008f5748" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-daef51c6-f7d8-15be-1068-4f0a008f5748" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">National attention has turned to Wisconsin yet again due to a Republican-led charge to eliminate longstanding and historically progressive state protections for employees. Last week, the Joint Finance Committee (JFC), a subcommittee of the Legislature, approved an omnibus motion that not only cuts the university budget by $250 million but also removes tenure protections for faculty from state statutes. The tenure item has led many around the country to conclude that Wisconsin is a conservative testing ground for ALEC-styled initiatives, while media representation would seem to suggest that there has been an active, political response to it. For instance, headlines last week read, “</span><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/01/wisconsin-faculty-incensed-motion-eliminate-tenure-state-statute" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Wisconsin faculty incensed by motion to eliminate tenure</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">,” “</span><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/05/faculty-members-protest-tenure-shared-governance-changes-board-regents" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Faculty members protest tenure, shared governance changes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">,” and “</span><a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/outraged-uw-madison-faculty-call-for-full-court-press-on-tenure-b99516301z1-306715741.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Outraged UW</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Madison faculty call for full court press on tenure</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">(The titles of the first two pieces, written by Colleen Flaherty for Inside Higher Ed, have recently been changed to remove any mention of faculty response. They are now entitled “Trying to Kill Tenure” and “Losing Hope in Wisconsin.”) </span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But these titles are misleading, as we will outline here, for numerous reasons </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and importantly for strategic reasons. Early on in February when the Biennial Budget first announced the potential magnitude of the cuts, there was widespread agreement among university administration and many faculty and students that protest and political action would only worsen the situation. Despite the ongoing attacks on the university system by the state legislature </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and the </span><a href="http://languagepolitics.org/2015/02/25/cross-doubles-down/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">seeming complicity</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> of the UW System President, Ray Cross </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> many faculty and students continue to trust the Board of Regents (BOR), UW</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank, and Cross to diplomatically defend student and faculty interests against the conservative agenda set by the Legislature. By and large, faculty, students and others decided that political action would only ensure the passage of the $300 million cuts proposed in the 2015-17 Budget. Despite the fact that sixteen of the eighteen members of the Board of Regents are Governor Walker appointees, there was a hopeful assumption on the part of faculty that the Board would push back against the recent Joint Finance Committee’s motion </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> especially item #39 which alters the tenure system by moving tenure protections from state statutes to the Board of Regents.</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But the Board of Regents, and UW-Madison’s administration in particular, is playing a strategic game. From what we see as an increasingly neoliberal university, the elimination of tenure and massive budgetary cuts are merely bumps along the road of “difficult decisions” that will transform Wisconsin’s flagship university into a more efficient competitor for tuition dollars and a more flexible manager of its employees. In recognizing this strategic game, our point is not to dismiss the importance of state defunding nor to argue that the state should be idealized or nostalgized as a funding source. </span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It is, rather, as Annie McClanahan recently pointed out during a talk on UW-Madison’s campus, that we cannot separate or exempt the university from its role in the production of student debt, delimited accessibility for students of color and students of limited economic means, and ultimately the collectively foreclosed future of what we continue to refer to as the public. One important example to bear in mind throughout this post comes out of </span><a href="http://www.demos.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Demos’</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> recent report “</span><a href="http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/Wisconsin%E2%80%99s%20Great%20Cost%20Shift.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Wisconsin’s Great Cost Shift</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.” The report greatly emphasizes state defunding and pays little attention to the role of universities’ pursuit of increased tuition revenues. But it also mentions that despite tuition revenue increases, expenditures on student instruction and academic support has slightly declined while expenditures on student services has risen 12.3%. Thus, </span><a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-university-administrators-gain.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">as we wrote</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in February on this blog, tuition control and what tuition can be used to pay for has been a main factor in the struggle for UW-Madison and System autonomy in Wisconsin. </span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-daef51c6-f7db-b72d-85ba-e9040944e0b2" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img height="281px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/aEIW0pg0ps9TaELDZdUBsUwyY64rVnhAQeKHQ_-m9KZ4Vvtl533ZD6MSKZlZbgb8MjdEx8OpqMGRwEpVj8K7DC9Mu2aZ0BkwwMl0L6-4DZuWtq26JzBBQYRloU5So0TqDQZ-pg" style="border: medium none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="515px;" /></span></span> </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Wait for it….</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At the emergency UW-Madison Faculty Senate meeting held on June 9th to address the JFC’s passage of the omnibus motion, Chancellor Blank attempted to allay faculty concerns by telling them that whereas other universities in the UW-System are subject to the Board of Regents’ tenure policy, UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee will have the ability to write their own tenure policies. Why is this? Because UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee are currently both in the process of finalizing independent Human Resource systems (through the </span><a href="http://hrdesign.wisc.edu/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">HR Design project</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">) that are to be implemented this year. Blank offered this olive branch as if it was a reprieve from the current legislative onslaught on the university. In reality, however, the HR Design project at UW-Madison is bound up with tenure elimination and budget cuts. And Blank’s use of it as a tool in the growing flexibilities toolbox obscures the fact that it is a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">causal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> factor and not a byproduct of the current funding crisis; Blank treated it instead as an affirmation of the need for autonomy from the state rather than bound up with the cuts that came along with it. What follows is a brief recap of the origin of this HR Design, since a broader outline was offered in a </span><a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-university-administrators-gain.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">past post</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> on this website and on </span><a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-high-price-of-public-authority-in.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Remaking the University</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At the same time that Governor Scott Walker was pushing through policies that demolished public sector unions in Wisconsin in 2011, then-UW</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Madison Chancellor Caroline “Biddy” Martin was in discussions with him about another item in that budget, which was called the New Badger Partnership (NBP). Walker had the prerogative to include the NBP because, in Wisconsin, the Governor has a divine fiat allowing him to write statutory changes, fiscal and otherwise, into the Biennial Budget. Chancellor Martin’s messaging about the NBP primarily focused on the financial flexibilities it would give the university for purchasing supplies. But for our purposes here, the most important and least spoken about feature of the NBP was that it would have given the University of Wisconsin-Madison far greater control over tuition setting capacities, both for in-state and out-of-state students. This Partnership was eventually watered down considerably and some of the “flexibilities” it did provide were expanded out to include all UW-System universities and colleges. But it gave UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee alone the power to create and implement their own, independent Human Resources policies. </span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Thus, the HR system Blank invoked on Tuesday </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">originated out of the first real political confrontation between the state and the university in recent years, not over abstract or general flexibilities but namely the right to set in-state and out-of-state tuition costs in a manner more akin to our university’s peers</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. We saw the same struggle ensue over tuition setting power in the most recent budget, where UW System leaders and Republican legislators both agreed that a Public Authority model, which </span><a href="https://badgerherald.com/news/2015/02/23/explained-what-is-a-public-authority-what-it-means-for-uw-system/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">granted tuition control</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> after a two-year freeze imposed by the state, was best for the System </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">– </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">even if it meant trading that power for significant cuts to the university’s budget.</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Blank’s characterization of the HR Design as a fortunate antidote to current tenure threats obscures past decisions and actions of the university, decisions that some warned against as potential triggers for future state defunding. Her portrayal of the Design as a disconnected tool that we happen to have at our disposal, rather than as a past point of contention in the recent history of the restructuring of higher education, makes it impossible to debate whether or not past decisions in the pursuit of autonomy were good ones, and whether or not we should continue to endorse and move forward with them now. And it further perpetuates the bureaucratic posture </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">– </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">with which many UW</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Madison workers and students are now familiar </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">– </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">in which we are told by administrators that not enough information is currently available to predict what will happen in the future. This posture ignores the incremental, but concrete, decisions made along the way, decisions which inform what future policies on tenure, governance and tuition hikes will look like years from now. As UW workers found out during the process through which UW</span>-<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Madison created its new HR system </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> one that removed seniority and established merit-based pay raises </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> once there is enough information about university policies, it’s already too late to contest them. &nbsp;</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This bureaucratic posture is reflected in Blank’s recent comment on her blog that “Section 39 isn’t a command or directive. It merely authorizes the Board of Regents to lay-off faculty for the stated reasons. The Regents can decide when and how they want to invoke that authority” (</span><a href="http://budget.wisc.edu/budget-news/blank-message-to-faculty-senate/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Chancellor Blank’s Message</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">). The ambiguity of this comment is stated as if it was meant to be a comfort for faculty, promising a malleable and open process in which they will have agency, through a Task Force, to write a tenure policy for UW</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Madison that adheres to the “gold standard” of the AAUP. It is further coupled with guarantees by Blank and others that campus community involvement in that process will be crucial, even as she describes shared governance through a weakened language of “consulting” with faculty. &nbsp;</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In such rhetoric the actual precarity of faculty’s current situation is turned into a selling point, neglecting the fact that while the BOR might approve this gold standard for UW-Madison it’s still entirely unclear how much jurisdiction they will have in implementing their own, newly acquired powers to terminate tenured professors above and beyond UW-Madison’s policy. As the Public Representative Organization of the Faculty Senate at UW-Madison (PROFS) has </span><a href="http://profs.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/profs-jfc-item39-statement1.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">pointed out</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the fact that the BOR can “terminate any faculty or academic staff…due to a budget or program decision regarding program discontinuance, curtailment, modification, or redirection,” means that there “could be no meaningful limit on the power of the Regents to dismiss faculty and/or to close programs or research centers that fell out of favor with administrators or political leaders.” In this context, Chancellor Blank’s statements evoking UW’s history of standing up for academic freedom and commitment to “sifting and winnowing” is far from reassuring. As </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">David Vanness, an associate professor of population health sciences, recently </span><a href="http://www.news.wisc.edu/23833" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">said</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">as to the future without tenure,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“We will sift where it is safe to sift. We will winnow where we are told to winnow.” </span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> It’s entirely unclear how this promise of “wait and see” will function in the future since, as </span><a href="http://languagepolitics.org/2015/06/09/stop-making-sense/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Richard Grusin</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> put it, “Wisconsin is about to go from being the only state with tenure in statute to being the only state with broad provisions for firing tenured faculty in statute.” But it’s likely that what Blank refers to as a mere authorization of power for the BOR is of a kind with the logic by which she separated the HR Design project from our universities’ struggle for greater access to private revenue streams like tuition at UW</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Madison. That is, it will be used in a similar manner in the future, swooping in at a moment of budgetary crisis and applied under the guise of necessity, as if it was the only way to protect the university from the state’s attacks. And shouldn’t we be grateful for it, they will ask, when programs need to be closed and certain faculty let go? </span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In instances like this, we are reminded of the logic </span><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/slavoj-zizek-responds-to-noam-chomsky.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Zizek describes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> where one waits patiently for evidence or data for proof of what might happen in the future, instead of looking in the face of available and explicit ideology. In our case, that means asking how the struggle for autonomy, a term that </span><a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121999/gov-scott-walker-weakens-tenure-university-wisconsin" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Scott Walker</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, Rebecca Blank and Ray Cross all deployed in support of the public authority model, connects seemingly disparate projects like our new HR system to recent budget cuts from the state, along with the rising tuition, fee and housing costs that are making UW-Madison an increasingly elitist, exclusive institution.</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Whose tenure?</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">HR policies are thus part of a systemic shift that includes decreased affordability and even, however unintentionally on the part of UW System administrators, the recent attacks on tenure. The successful precedence of those policies, which have effectively eroded job security for staff and non-faculty workers by terminating seniority rights and installing individuated merit-based pay raises, only further highlight an entrenched raced and classed ideology that would preserve job security only for those doing “intellectual” or academic work at the university. Such policies can easily target janitors and clerical workers without backlash from academic workers, in part because tenure was defined in its origins as a protection specifically for academic freedom and not as a job protection. It’s no surprise that Blank can defend tenure through the same system that is stripping other workers of job protections, since it was first established in 1916 when the AAUP abandoned unionization for “a weak form of academic freedom” through which faculty “retained the power to govern knowledge production [but] gave up power to govern the political and economic functions of the university” (</span><a href="https://www.academia.edu/1375246/Time_and_the_University" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Johnson et al 492</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">).</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Even so, the threat to knowledge production is not evenly distributed today. Numerous </span><a href="http://dissentandcookies.org/2015/06/08/189/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">faculty responses</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to the recent tenure threat, including the rhetoric of a mass exodus of faculty from the state, suggest that somehow any faculty person, working on any topic could be affected by the BOR increased powers to terminate employment. While theoretically true, this view ignores the historic and ongoing differences in how faculty and academic programs are treated within the university. Thus, the question of who will be most affected by the changes in tenure are connected to the historic development of ‘academic freedom’ and tenure, the continued “pattern of marginalization” of certain academic programs, and the general trends toward the precaritization of labor in the university. And it tends to ignore the fact that programs and departments have always been tied to their financial viability in some way, as we saw exemplified in the sweeping closures of humanities and arts departments after the 2008 financial crisis.</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In response to Republican attacks on tenure as a job-for-life guarantee, faculty have argued that tenure provides critical protection for academic freedom. And certainly throughout the history of tenure it has buffered faculty from external intervention and attack. However, this has not universally been the case. As pointed out in Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira’s book, </span><a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-imperial-university" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">The Imperial University</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, certain faculty </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> especially those of color </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> whose research is deemed politically contentious, have lacked these protections. They quote Ellen W. Shrecker, who argues that the early Seligman Report by the AAUP in 1915, actually “reveals how deeply enmeshed the notion of academic freedom was with the overall status, security and prestige of the academic profession” (Chatterjee and Maira 2014:35). Thus, while early discussions of academic freedom sought to protect faculty from outsiders, they did not “adequately address political dissidence or any political positions that were considered ‘unsympathetic’ by the majority of academics” (36). Instead, it was largely focused on maintaining “‘appropriate” behavior that would not jeopardize the professionalism and status of academia.” And thus we see a continued policing of academic “civility” on campuses around the country. </span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In this context, then, the changes in tenure at UW would certainly affect faculty work - perhaps increasing anxiety and subsequently leading to conservatism. However, faculty who are already marginalized are likely to be affected the most by these changes. In a famous example, Professor Steven Salaita’s faculty appointment was terminated by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his public critique of Israel’s actions in Gaza in the summer of 2014. The University justified its decision by citing Salaita’s “incivility.” A recent </span><a href="http://www.aaup.org/report/UIUC" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">report</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> by the American Association of University Professors, recognizes that “civility consistently operates to constitute relations of power,” and that “it is always the powerful who determine its meaning </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> a meaning that serves to delegitimize the words and actions of those to whom it is applied.” In addition, as </span><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/09/steven-salaita-first-amendment-rights-academic-freedom-and-the-elephant-in-the-room/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">pointed out</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> by Salaita, the language of civility also works to reproduce a “colonial logic” </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> one in which the university is thoroughly entrenched </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> determining who gets to speak and which departments get support.</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here at UW-Madison, the recent efforts to consolidate the Ethnic Studies programs </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> which include Chicano and Latino Studies, Asian American Studies, American Indian Studies and Afro-American Studies </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">–</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> exemplify what Political Science Professor Ben Marquez </span><a href="http://host.madison.com/daily-cardinal/future-of-ethnic-studies-divides-uw/article_a77aee8e-7ece-11e4-8356-430561e1a829.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">calls</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> a “greater pattern of marginalization” on our own campus. Despite asserting the importance of diversity on campus, in 2013 approximately </span><a href="http://host.madison.com/daily-cardinal/future-of-ethnic-studies-divides-uw/article_a77aee8e-7ece-11e4-8356-430561e1a829.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">72% of students and 76% of faculty and staff</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> identified as white. In this context, as </span><a href="http://badgerreport.journalism.wisc.edu/2015/04/16/uw-madison-ethnic-studies-fights-for-resources/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Karma Chavez</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, a professor in communications, argues, “the very programs designed to help students learn diverse histories and feel included on this campus are treated like third class citizens.” And due to the threat of budget cuts, the Gender and Women's Studies department at UW-Madison received notice of a 20% budgetary cut despite having performed very well on the university’s own enrollment-based metrics. So even adhering to the bureaucratic norms put in place by administration may not protect the marginalized and much-embattled programs that were, perhaps, never the central concern of academic freedom to protect in the first place.</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How to act on a campus divided</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At the recent Faculty Senate meeting, Blank vouched for the Board of Regents as a body that we can trust, but also said only time will prove whether or not they share our care and concern for higher education in the state. As we’ve suggested above, this is a rhetoric that needs to be read closely and carefully as it bears a bureaucratic strategy within it that obscures past decisions made by our own administrators about state funding and the primacy of increasing private funds. Those decisions continue to shape our present and future in Wisconsin. And as we’ve also suggested, her assurances leave questions about equity and race in regards to student access and faculty protection completely to the side. These two reasons are precisely why we believe it is important to organize and protest strategically on our campuses, and not only against the state, as UW</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Madison’s administration has itself been an active agent, albeit in complicated and sometimes contradictory ways, in producing our current crisis. With the “flexibilities” that are inevitably coming down the pipeline, those of us concerned with equity, access, race and gender issues must hold our administration responsible, and we cannot do that by remaining silent or by placing trust in their ambivalent information about future decisions that is always deferred. &nbsp;</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Our decisions about strategy, protest and political action need to be informed, of course, by the 2011 Capitol occupation and how it has been remembered during this most recent political crisis. In the month after the current budget proposal was released, much of our campus community and administration warned that any response similar to that of 2011 would only further weaken our chances of reducing cuts, because it would make us look like “crazy radicals” and play into Walker’s own narrative. This kind of revisionism isn’t simply wrong, given that what received widespread media attention throughout the the occupation and what led to its limited agenda (Kill the Bill) was that the fact that it was quite unradical in many regards. The Capitol protests were peaceful and largely filled by teachers, firefighters, and nurses--not by insurrectionists.</span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="politifact-photos-Kill_the_bill.jpeg" height="413" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/M2Cu9egKgCQPAmioFVvKxVF-v5e5PhsBVAwQOFZbdpfjF4y01Tyv-D7bZbIHHdZaTa4RkP-tXTfKTt7mCsw_ysRU5GP4ksSTgVK2ssRgQrtQ8QYOJ-zB0YN2GhXZippbNKjasw" style="border: medium none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="640" /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But you wouldn’t know that by talking to most Wisconsinites, who argue that the extreme nature of the occupation catalyzed the failure of the later recall election that tried to oust Walker from power, rather than the </span><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/scott-walker-right-to-work/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Democrats' mismanagement</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> of it. Ask most people in Madison or consult popular publications on the recall, and they will attest that the occupation proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that political action is too risky in conservative times like these, an assessment that confirms, a la Frederic Jameson, that history hurts. But in our case it also seems that history is traumatic, as many of those who participated in the protests now reject them and endorse a revisionist account in which it wasn’t everyday people engaging in direct action in 2011, perhaps for the first time in their lives, but some other unstable, radical population. What could have been a starting point for building a more skilled and strategic action for the future has lapsed into a narrative that makes action an untouchable end point, never to be repeated. This interpretation of the past informed the strategic choices made early on in the budgetary process, making it seem like the only channels available to university workers and students were the doors of System and UW-Madison administrators and their largely closed-door discussions.</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The results they returned to us, a reduction from $300 million to $250 million in cuts and a proposal to raise out-of-state and international student tuition by more than $10,000 over the next four years, might maintain some kind of status quo of funding on our campus for now. But what are the larger impacts of having depended on legislative lobbying and administrative approaches to address state budgetary cuts? Who will get left out, put on the margins, made the exception or the example of the rule under these conditions, both as a result of cuts to the budget and to tenure protections? And who would we be struggling for and with if we instead chose to cultivate an active culture of dissent from this status quo and engaged instead in political action?&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-daef51c6-f7e4-83fa-9672-d88c147ccb39" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One answer to these questions might be available in the history of struggles for ethnic studies, black studies and women’s studies programs that took place from the 1960s up to the 1980s, and their focused strategy of antagonism, occupations and concrete demands. Instead of relying on promises of future reform made under the sign of multiculturalism and diversity, students and some faculty engaged in political actions because they realized it was the only way to leverage their power and to make demands on university faculty and administrators. Many of these attempts were unsuccessful and others were translated into disciplines and colleges that conformed to the existing university structures. But we close with this example because it reminds us that students and faculty before us recognized and identified their campuses, and not simply their states, as sites of dissensus and struggle, rather than unity and agreement. Those were struggles over the kind of non-utilitarian education, one not reducible to the demands of the job market, that can seem impossible to defend in public today. As Nick Mitchell recently glossed in his </span><a href="http://www.lowendtheory.org/post/112138864200/theses-on-adjunctification" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Theses on Adjunctification</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the struggle for ethnic studies and black studies came about at the very same time that black, brown and female workers were brought into the university to perform low wage, contingent labor. We should keep this in mind today, as we see the inverse taking place in the collapse of such programs alongside the explosion of contingent labor far beyond dining halls and custodial closets. It is time choose our histories strategically, then, and align ourselves with those workers already in the most precarious positions in our universities, and to fight for tenure not for the sake of already-tenured faculty but with those who have been excluded from it.</span></div></div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/06/in-regents-we-trust-how-autonomy-put.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (d)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-3427000885087189275Tue, 26 May 2015 15:33:00 +00002015-05-26T09:03:12.488-07:00The Political Economy of Enrollment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-good-point-in-paul-camposs-bad-new.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-good-point-in-paul-camposs-bad-new.html" border="0" height="307" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WgPTScrugyo/VWSN29lFcOI/AAAAAAAABU0/Utr_4WBMsSE/s400/campos%2B1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>One the most important debates about the crisis of public higher education these days has to do with understanding the reasons for the restructuring of the public university, which is tied to everything from skyrocketing tuition and student debt to administrative corporatization. In very schematic terms, there are two answers: one focuses on state governments and budget cuts to public higher education, the other on university administrations and their profit-seeking protagonism. The way we choose to answer the question is politically important because it is part of what shapes our strategic and tactical response. If the state government is the primary actor, interventions will generally operate at the level of electoral politics, either through supporting candidates, lobbying, or more generally “making a case” for supporting public education. In contrast, if university administrations are the primary actors, interventions will generally occur more locally, at the level of the campus or system, through actions like rallies, walkouts, strikes, occupations, and so on. Of course, things aren’t always as clear cut as this dichotomy suggests. But in a context where austerity is so visible and “politics” is largely seen as something politicians do, it’s important to remember the active role of administrators in restructuring their universities into the ground.<br /><br />These debates are organized in part by how the numbers are calculated. Take the recent and controversial <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-college-tuition-costs-so-much.html">essay</a> by Paul Campos, which argued counterintuitively that government support for higher education has actually increased, not declined, since the 1960s. He claimed that the real reason tuition has gone up so much is not budget cuts but the skyrocketing expenditures that channel money into administrative bloat and building construction. Not surprisingly, the piece generated a quick response from folks who see state funding as the key. A number of these critiques turned on the claim that he was using the wrong metric—rather than aggregate support for higher education, he should instead be using <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/04/06/why_is_college_so_expensive_the_new_york_times_offers_an_awful_explanation.html">per-student funding</a>:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Overall, public spending on higher education has, as Campos argues, risen dramatically over the long term. But so have the number of Americans attending college. When administrators say that government support is shrinking, what they usually mean is that <i>per student</i> appropriations have fallen. This is a crucial point. Someone has to foot the bill for each and every undergraduate's education. If taxpayers don't do it, then families have to pick up the slack themselves.</blockquote>And sure enough, the administrators did in fact say exactly that. Nathan Brostrom, the Chief Financial Officer of the University of California system (and <a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2010/01/uc-budget-and-jp-morgan.html">former JP Morgan exec</a>), wrote a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/10/opinion/soaring-tuition-what-is-to-blame.html">letter</a> to the <i>Times</i> criticizing the Campos piece in which he made exactly this argument:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Mr. Campos blames administrative bloat and high salaries; I disagree. The State of California, for example, funds the University of California system at the same level as it did in 1999—even though today we enroll 83,000 more students and have one more campus.</blockquote>The per-student argument makes mathematical sense. It’s obvious that equal funding / more students = less funding per student. State funding per student has obviously declined. And yet... using this metric as the gold standard seems to miss something important about the function of the student at the public university today.<br /><br />When higher education was relatively fully funded by the state—when tuition was zero—the per-student metric made sense. Under the Master Plan, state funding for the UC was <a href="http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/from-master-plan-to-no-plan-the-slow-death-of-public-higher-education">pegged to in-state enrollment</a>. In that context, enrollment served as a reasonable way to quantify the “public good” produced by state support for higher education. Rising enrollment theoretically meant more trained workers who could be funneled into the labor market. The massive expansion of the infrastructure of public higher education during the 1960s, when not only new buildings but entirely new campuses were constructed, was justified in exactly these terms.<br /><br />Over the last three decades, however, these enrollment quotas have gradually been removed. Little remains, likewise, of the idea of higher education as a “public good.” What is the function of the student today? It depends who you ask. Teachers see (or should see) students as critical, thinking subjects, who they can learn with and from. But administrators see students as dollar signs. These days, students are little more than revenue streams that show up on credit reports as potential liquidity and favorable interest rates. We all understand that tuition increases are an attempt by university administrations to bring in more revenue. <i>But enrollment increases do the same thing</i>. And this actually shouldn’t be all that controversial, since we already talk about <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/18/report-criticizes-public-colleges-use-funds-recruit-out-state-students">out-of-state enrollment</a> in exactly this way. But is it the case for in-state enrollment as well?<br /><br />Last week, the UC regents approved an increase in out-of-state tuition by 8 percent per year for the next 5 years. Next year, out-of-state students will pay an extra $1,830 in tuition. During the meeting, Brostrom himself <a href="https://twitter.com/uc_faculty/status/601448309920636930">pointed out</a> that the UC could accommodate 10,000 more undergraduate students if the state provided additional funding for them. He also suggested that the administration would <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2015/05/21/uc-regents-approve-increases-in-undergrad-nonresident-tuition-endorse-funding-agreement/">lobby the state</a> for these funds. The CFO’s language frames increased enrollment as a public good, a drag on the university’s resources, certainly, but something that the state should do, as the state once did. What he doesn’t say, however, is that enrolling 10,000 more in-state undergrads (at 2015-2016 tuition levels) would provide the university with an extra $112.2 million per year. And even if we assume those 83,000 extra tuition-paying students are all California residents, that’s nearly a billion extra dollars in gross annual revenue over 1999 levels.<br /><br />Now, the UC administration claims that the cost of instruction is greater than in-state tuition. But these claims are at best debatable and at worst simply not credible, because as Chris Newfield and Bob Samuels have shown they include research and other non-educational expenses in order to <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-current-cost-debate-will-do-nothing.html">inflate the alleged instructional cost</a>. (It's gotten to the point that, as Samuels <a href="http://changinguniversities.blogspot.com/2015/02/is-uc-spin-spinning-out-of-control.html">observes</a>, the administration literally claims it costs $342,500 to educate one medical student for one year.) According to Newfield, a more reasonable estimate of the cost of instruction for undergraduates would be somewhere between 40-80 percent of the administration’s figures. Even using the higher rate, then, the administration still generates a net profit for every extra student they bring in.<br /><br />Per-student funding can be a useful metric for clarifying certain trends, but it’s equally important to understand the things it makes invisible. University administrators make decisions about enrollment not out of some abstract interest in the “public good” but rather out of a very concrete interest in the bottom line. Enrollment should not be treated as a given but as a variable that may shift as executives and financial officers seek to optimize revenue flows. In this context, using per-student funding may obscure the function of the student today while deflecting antagonism toward the state.http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-political-economy-of-enrollment.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (d)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-5199957889605927420Fri, 15 May 2015 03:16:00 +00002015-05-18T10:16:26.429-07:00Ambiguous news from Sacramento Today Governor Brown announced his <a href="http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2015-16/pdf/Revised/BudgetSummary/HigherEducation.pdf">revised budget</a>. Despite general enthusiasm about its two-year tuition freeze for in-state students, the budget presents a pretty ambiguous picture. In addition to allowing up to 8% annual hikes for out-of-state tuition, it also imposes a series of regressive transformations on the UCs. For example, the budget sets in place requirements that campuses push students toward three-year degrees:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">In addition to supporting timely four‑year degrees, each campus will develop three‑year degree pathways for 10 out of its top 15 majors by March 1, 2016, which will provide students with another option to earn a UC degree. The UC has committed to promoting and encouraging these accelerated pathways with a goal that 5 percent of students will access these accelerated tracks by the summer of 2017.</blockquote>The reduction of time-to-degree is presented as a solution to a problem that would not exist absent university privatization: 3 year degrees are affirmed by the State insofar as they allow students to avoid paying another year's worth of high tuition and room and board. But this accelerated pace would diminish educational quality, and would impose on students an even more intense schedule, making it difficult for them to organize strikes and other sorts of unproductive activities. A couple other areas of concern are the agreements between the governor and UCOP that in-state tuition should begin to rise by at least the rate of inflation after the two-year freeze, the establishment of a third pension tier, and the $18 million dollar cut to the Middle Class Scholarship Program.<br /><br />But to return to the out-of-state tuition hike: the state's effort to divide the student body (in terms of their immediate political interests) between those from California and those from other states or from abroad seems to be working. While the out-of-state tuition hike is not nearly as high as what was being discussed last December (an up to 8% annual increase rather than 17%), the multi-thousand dollar hike is not insignificant in terms of out-of-state students' debt levels, nor is it politically insignificant. Those who rule the state seem to be on the verge of breaking what had been an established across the board tuition freeze: they are thus rolling back some of the student movement gains of 2012. The following charts, composed by Shannon Ikebe, show recent (and projected) trends in tuition rates (based on data from UCLA): <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1kK77iNLXRU/VVVdnCpPf2I/AAAAAAAAA2g/cFxs4Sg1O5I/s1600/11258027_10155585617465650_6413241584431589276_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="321" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1kK77iNLXRU/VVVdnCpPf2I/AAAAAAAAA2g/cFxs4Sg1O5I/s640/11258027_10155585617465650_6413241584431589276_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aOj9tEmhk0U/VVVdwA4k-8I/AAAAAAAAA2w/jjOp8FzUN_4/s1600/11145894_10155585615805650_3900419537287851038_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="380" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aOj9tEmhk0U/VVVdwA4k-8I/AAAAAAAAA2w/jjOp8FzUN_4/s640/11145894_10155585615805650_3900419537287851038_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Not only does the out-of-state hike extract more money from certain students and thus divide the immediate interests of the student body, it also <a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/12/on-democrats-education-plan-part-2.html">exacerbates inequalities</a> between UC campuses, with those (like UCB and UCLA) with relatively whiter and wealthier student bodies receiving a disproportionate funding increase, while those (like UCR, UCM, and UCSC) with higher percentages of working class / students of color receiving relatively little increase following the hike, since they have significantly lower rates of out-of-state students. While the chart on the left shows the percentage of the out-of-state tuition hike that will go to the respective campuses, the chart on the right shows what a more equitable distribution of funding would look like.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4smSSSnXjMo/VVVeYdLt1nI/AAAAAAAAA24/2Cq0WcVVKWA/s1600/campuspercentages-page-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4smSSSnXjMo/VVVeYdLt1nI/AAAAAAAAA24/2Cq0WcVVKWA/s640/campuspercentages-page-001.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">All of this is to say that Brown's revised budget is a politically ambiguous document, reflecting at once the power of mobilized students and the current limits of this power. Those who rule the state (whether they be UCOP bureaucrats, the Regents, or State Representatives) have managed to chip away at the tuition freeze and to introduce regressive reforms of UC education, even as active students (led by those at Santa Cruz) have managed to hold off even worse privatizing reforms.&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Beyond tuition, there are a number of regressive dynamics happening at the moment with respect to the repression of student organizers. At Santa Cruz, students who blockaded a highway in early March are still suspended from campus under the orders of conduct officers. This is, I believe, the first extended suspension imposed by a UC administration on anti-privatization protesters in recent memory. And it's possible that Berkeley students who briefly occupied California Hall a few weeks ago demanding a community benefits agreement for the Richmond Bay campus could also be facing conduct charges. If such charges materialize, they would constitute the first student conduct prosecutions for political activity at UCB since the delegitimization of the Office of Student Conduct accomplished over the spring of 2010 by a group of Boalt law students and by other active students.&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Thus, on both anti-privatization and anti-repression fronts, much remains to be done. &nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Update</b> [5/15/15]: Chris Newfield is up with <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-may-budget-revision-uc-budget-goes.html">a new piece</a> on the revised budget, that especially breaks down the total state contribution levels, the pension re-tiering, and the state's insistence on a certain minimum ratio of transfer to four-year students, among other aspects of the revised budget.&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>&nbsp;&nbsp; http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/05/ambiguous-news-from-sacramento.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-5256056485461534150Mon, 11 May 2015 19:18:00 +00002015-05-11T12:18:03.980-07:00What Makes a University Public?: Privatization, Environmental Racism, and UC Berkeley’s Real Estate Office <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bj6hMIVkKlY/VVEARAaNShI/AAAAAAAAA2A/kZxP1fOgZ34/s1600/11049531_10155553217170385_4696610562617957011_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="294" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bj6hMIVkKlY/VVEARAaNShI/AAAAAAAAA2A/kZxP1fOgZ34/s640/11049531_10155553217170385_4696610562617957011_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><i>by Beezer de Martelly</i></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">“It’s a gift to be here—you can take that to the bank.”</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">EVCP Claude Steele, May 5 Berkeley Forum “What Makes a University Public?”</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">“There is deferred maintenance all over the place.”</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, May 5 Berkeley Forum “What Makes a University Public?”</span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p4"><span class="s1">For those who haven’t been paying attention, <a href="http://serc.berkeley.edu/oped-public-or-private-the-office-of-real-estates-hostile-takeover-of-the-office-of-student-affairs/"><span class="s2">UC Berkeley’s recent move to expand the Real Estate Office’s control</span></a> has led to some strange and shocking administrative moments in the last couple weeks.</span></div><div class="p4"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p5"><span class="s1">One such moment was a May 5 Berkeley Forum in which Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Claude Steele hosted a chat called “What Makes a University Public?” In this talk, they attempted to redefine “public education” to effectively argue that the kinds of private financial investments that circulate through the newly expanded Real Estate Office do not constitute privatization. These investments—alternately called “Public-Private Partnerships”—currently include privately funded construction projects such as <a href="http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/10/30/berkeley-global-campus/"><span class="s2">the Berkeley Global Campus at Richmond Bay</span></a>, a brand new UC campus that will focus on lucrative STEM and Silicon Valley research; <a href="http://occupythefarm.org/"><span class="s2">the Gill Tract</span></a>, a piece of land the UC is trying to lease to outside contractors for $900,000/year for six acre plots; Berkeley student housing, including <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2015/04/09/bowles-hall-sell-bonds-cover-renovation-costs/"><span class="s2">the privately funded Bowles Hall</span></a>, several other <a href="http://realestate.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/stiles_developer_rfq_0.pdf"><span class="s2">new large-scale dormitories</span></a>, and real estate developments at <a href="http://patch.com/california/albany/uc-proposes-sprouts-farmers-market-at-university-village"><span class="s2">UC Village</span></a>, to name only a few.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p6"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p5"><span class="s1">Many students, faculty, workers, and community members are challenging the administration’s superficial rhetoric that such construction on public land does not constitute privatization, citing the <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/print-edition/2011/05/27/contractors-fined-for-work-at-uc-davis.html?page=all"><span class="s2">lack of oversight</span></a> for these projects, the ways that <a href="http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2015-02-20/not-so-fast-uc-berkeley-biofuel-research-takes-hit-bp-oil"><span class="s2">private money shifts research possibilities and priorities</span></a>, and the <a href="http://cucfa.org/news/tuition_bonds.php"><span class="s2">rising tuition costs which are used to secure the Real Estate Office’s low interest construction loans, called “bonds.”</span></a> Further, many believe the exorbitant costs for these expensive construction investments will ultimately be deferred to students, <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/collegesports/article/Cal-scrambling-to-cover-stadium-bill-4604221.php"><span class="s2">as has been the practice in the past</span></a>, and the public, <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/23/lsu-bankruptcy.html"><span class="s2">should the University go bankrupt</span></a>. Dirks even admitted that this new development comes at the expense of deferred maintenance, as much of the Berkeley campus is in desperate need of basic upkeep.<br /><br />The egregious forum was protested by multiple allies, where critics seemed to far outnumber supporters and even neutral attendees at the event. Unionists came to ask questions about poverty-level wages and job insecurity amid Berkeley’s contracting out of non-unionized labor. A Teamsters 2010 flyer read “Low Wages Do Not Serve the Public Good.” Also present were various students working on anti-privatization efforts, some of whom distributed sample audience questions for administrators about the UC’s commitment to public education. One question read, “Many of the UC Regents are heavily involved in the financial and real estate sectors. How should the UC Regents balance their private interests with the public’s interest?...What do we, as a public institution, owe to the public of Richmond?”</span></div><div class="p6"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p5"><span class="s1">Perhaps the most significant presence at the Forum was a group of Black student organizers who are <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2015/04/20/students-faculty-fight-reverse-tenure-decision-espm-professor/"><span class="s2">fighting to reverse Prof. Carolyn Finney’s arbitrary and unexplained denial of tenure</span></a>. Finney, the only Black Professor in the Environmental Sciences Policy and Management department, researches racial exclusion in the environmental movement. Hers is an especially crucial voice at a time when the UC is trying to break ground in Richmond to construct a new, privately funded campus atop <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/viewbyepaid/cad981436363"><span class="s2">an EPA “superfund” designated toxic waste site</span></a> in a largely black and brown working class community. Finney’s much acclaimed work represents an especially critical perspective during this phase of Richmond’s development in an environmentally sensitive area. Concerningly, one of the campus functions the Real Estate Office has taken over in its transition is Berkeley’s Environmental Health and Safety Office, which enforces compliance with environmental regulations, water safety, and construction permitting. Whether the EH&amp;S Office will retain its autonomy and commitment to environmental justice or become a permit mill for new construction remains to be seen. Unless the University reverses the decision to deny Prof. Finney’s tenure, a decision within Chancellor Dirks’ power, this battle to ensure environmental justice will need to be waged with one fewer respected local researcher and community ally.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p6"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p5"><span class="s1">Also prominent was the Respect Richmond Coalition, a student group pushing the <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2015/04/30/students-discuss-berkeley-global-campus-administration-protest-community-benefits-agreement/"><span class="s2">Chancellor to sign a Community Benefits Agreement</span></a> that would ensure that Richmond residents are not harmed by and actually benefit from the new UC campus construction. Many <a href="http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/12/15/berkeley-global-campus-ommunity-meet/"><span class="s2">Richmond community members are currently struggling to stay in their homes</span></a> as land speculation and rent rises and contributes to gentrification, and they are fighting to ensure that the new campus provides jobs and educational opportunities for local residents. Six student members of this group are now facing Student Conduct Charges for staging <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2015/04/22/respect-richmond-coalition-hosts-speakout-protests-outside-chancellors-residence/"><span class="s2">a peaceful sit-in outside the Chancellor’s office last week</span></a></span><span class="s2"> to push Dirks to sign the Richmond Agreement</span><span class="s1">, an attempt to silence student concerns about the direction of the Richmond Bay development project. At the Berkeley Forum, a dozen Respect Richmond Coalition members assembled in a line at the front of the stage, mouths taped shut, holding signs that read “You Can’t Arrest Our Voices” and “Drop the Student Conduct Charges.”</span></div><div class="p6"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p5"><span class="s1">Amid these groups was Fossil Free Cal, whose members distributed pamphlets calling on the UC to divest itself from fossil fuel assets. This group, comprised of students and alums, connected the University’s financial interest in toxic commodities to its profiting off of environmental injustice. “Talk is cheap,” read Fossil Free Cal’s flyer, “A public university that fails to ACT in the public interest sells its mission short.”</span></div><div class="p6"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p4"><span class="s1">For those of us committed to a public UC Berkeley, this is an exciting moment, where there is potential to link many ongoing campus struggles to fight structural racism, privatization and gentrification, environmental degradation, and anti-labor measures. The <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2015/05/06/berkeley-forum-panel-public-higher-education-shut-amid-protest/"><span class="s2">forum was eventually shut down when the Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost refused to answer audience questions</span></a> about workers’ unlivable wages, when Finney’s tenure denial will be reversed and what it was denied in the first place, and why UC administrators are so actively undermining the UC’s public education mission.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p4"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><br /><div class="p5"><span class="s1">I write this update both to keep interested readers and coalition partners—wherever you may be—in the loop and also to urge people to continue organizing on these issues in whatever spaces you can and that feel right. This is a really significant time for our University, and it’s future as a public institution committed to racial and economic equality is truly on the line.&nbsp;</span></div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/05/what-makes-university-public.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)152tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-7579698336138223607Fri, 27 Mar 2015 20:18:00 +00002015-03-27T13:18:59.940-07:00Statement of Occupation from the Che Cafe at UC San Diego<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AJlkrUjG_EI/VRW6090vgsI/AAAAAAAABSI/hYu0brkNwEI/s1600/11010570_10203532671909636_437917569989616071_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WumLwSiysNU/VRW61Bdw4mI/AAAAAAAABSM/MoZp-vQuHfI/s1600/11055652_1570455356544530_1183004236_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WumLwSiysNU/VRW61Bdw4mI/AAAAAAAABSM/MoZp-vQuHfI/s1600/11055652_1570455356544530_1183004236_n.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>The Che Cafe has been occupied. The 35 year old cultural center, social space, DIY music venue, student/worker co-operative and affordable eatery has come under the complete control of students, faculty, alumni and community members who have refused to leave its premises, despite a UC sanctioned eviction notice that became active on March 24 at 6:00 a.m. For over one year, the administration of UCSD has attempted to shut the Che Cafe Collective out of its historic home using a variety of secretive bureaucratic maneuvers, manipulations and blatant lies. This most recent battle between the Che Cafe Collective and UCSD administrators can be contextualized within the larger history of struggle that informs the identity and praxis of the Che Cafe. By our count, this is the 5th time that university administration has attempted to eliminate the Che Cafe Collective since it became operational in 1980. All prior eviction attempts carried out by the university have resulted in abject failure. Each subsequent eviction attempt has inspired wider community and student solidarity with the Che Cafe Collective and this occasion is no different. Students, community members, faculty and alumni from disparate backgrounds have become determined to demonstrate their power and willingness to engage in collective direct action to preserve the Che Cafe.<br /><br />The Che Cafe Collective and its supporters are not so nearsighted that we ignore the obvious parallels between the fight that UC students have brought against the continuous fee and tuition hikes enacted by the Regents and the fight to prevent the closures of integral student facilities which would no doubt result in an erasure of culture and student self organization that is preserved by spaces like the Che Cafe. Our fight is one and the same.<br /><br />When we act as we are now, by occupying a space that rightly belongs to the students and community members who utilize it, we act in solidarity with the 6 UC Santa Cruz students who are being criminalized by the UC after having taken direct action to preserve the accessibility of higher education. When we act as we are now, we are acting also in solidarity with the students of Quebec, who have once again taken to the streets with calls for a general strike in order to ensure their access to public universities. When we act as we are now, we invoke the knowledge, practice and ferocity that UC students across California acted with in 2009. When we act as we are now, we hope to inspire action on your part.<br /><br />Our occupation is ongoing - we invite you to join our fight.<br /><br />forward until victory,<br /><br />some occupiers and collective members of the Che Cafe Collective<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AJlkrUjG_EI/VRW6090vgsI/AAAAAAAABSI/hYu0brkNwEI/s1600/11010570_10203532671909636_437917569989616071_n.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AJlkrUjG_EI/VRW6090vgsI/AAAAAAAABSI/hYu0brkNwEI/s1600/11010570_10203532671909636_437917569989616071_n.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a> http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/03/statement-of-occupation-from-che-cafe_27.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (d)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-948572646995919726Thu, 05 Mar 2015 00:41:00 +00002015-03-04T16:46:25.168-08:00Please take action: Students seeking to redesignate restrooms as “all gender” face harassment and police detention at UC Berkeley<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HbUvIgwMaW0/VPelpPvqPsI/AAAAAAAAAyo/-Iokz-uG3lI/s1600/tumblr_nkp8ulBazq1uokuqgo2_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HbUvIgwMaW0/VPelpPvqPsI/AAAAAAAAAyo/-Iokz-uG3lI/s1600/tumblr_nkp8ulBazq1uokuqgo2_1280.jpg" height="355" width="640" /></a></div><i><br /></i><i>Reposted from <a href="http://ucopbathrooms.tumblr.com/">UCOP Bathroom Brigade</a>:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yesterday, March 3, an anonymous group known as the Bathroom Brigade posted “all gender” signs on bathroom doors across UC Berkeley. The signs include the following text:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in;"><blockquote class="tr_bq">Please excuse our dust! The approval and planning process for a bathroom redesignation is surprisingly time-consuming, but in the interim the University’s priority is making sure everyone has safe access to a bathroom. As a temporary measure, we encourage everyone, of all genders, to use this bathroom. We’ll put up a permanent sign as soon as we can.</blockquote></div><div class="MsoNormal">In a tongue-in-cheek way, the signs seek to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pass</i> as being officially authorized. They also highlight the reality that trans and gender nonconforming people on campus do not have adequate access to safe bathrooms. University administrators appeared to have recognized this unmet safety need: months ago, President Napolitano promised to redesignate every single-user bathroom as “all gender,” while UC labor relations agreed to provide reasonable access to all gender restrooms for student workers. Since then though, UC Berkeley administrators have not redesignated a single bathroom.&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yesterday, when members of the Bathroom Brigade sought to expedite the process of redesignation, administrators and UC police officers responded in ways that threw into question the UC’s stated commitment to the safety of trans and gender nonconforming students and workers. First, administrators sent out emails disavowing the signs, as in the following:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;">Dear Stanley Hall Faculty, Researchers, Students, and Staff,</span><span style="color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;">Signs have appeared on the building’s restroom doors that indicate that restrooms are available to all genders. Please disregard the signs; they will be taken down as soon as possible.</span></blockquote></div><div class="MsoNormal">It seems that these efforts to take down the signs have already overstepped, as previously authorized “all gender” signs in Stephens Hall were torn down yesterday. Additionally, members of the Bathroom Brigade and supportive students have reported facing harassment or violence in connection with the signs. Some members of the Bathroom Brigade were followed down the hallways of a building by a campus administrator. And a supportive student who attempted to discourage an administrator from tearing down the signs faced aggression. As she writes:</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background: white; color: #141823; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;">Still trying to collect my memories from the heat of the moment, but moments ago I stood in front of this sign to stop a man from aggressively tearing it down as we went to the bathroom after class. He had torn down 3 of 4 signs despite repeated requests to stop, and was so determined to get the last one that he attempted to pull it from behind my head. My friends and a passerby were shocked by ho</span><span style="color: #141823;">w he went so far as to almost touch/hit me to get to that sign (which he may have, but I was too focused on protecting the sign to notice). There is a photo of me pointing my camera phone to get him to back off, since he stood incredibly close. All of this occurred even after I explained that the folks behind this campaign are trying to force the UC to take issues of gender and trans safety seriously. He and his friend are both older white men who likely work in the electrical engineering and computer science admin office, so we were surprised that they felt so comfortable proceeding aggressively in a confrontational dispute with students. But their behavior is a perfect example for why the UC needs to stop dragging their heels in implementing accessible gender neutral bathrooms.</span></blockquote></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: #141823;">Then, early yesterday afternoon, two students were detained by the UC Police in connection with the bathroom redesignations. A white trans woman and a black cis man, both members of the Bathroom Brigade, were initially confronted by two building administrators in the hallway of the Li Ka Shing Center – a building that currently contains no all gender restrooms. One of the administrators demanded that “all gender” signs be removed, which the students attempted to do. When the administrator continued harassing the students, they left the building and walked three blocks to a bus stop. He followed them the entire way, talking on his phone as he walked. The students then boarded a bus and rode on it for a block, at which point the bus was stopped by two UC Police officers. The officers came onto the bus and detained the students. After detaining them on the sidewalk, the officers said that they were planning to report the students to the Office of Student Conduct, and that, if there had been any damage to paint surfaces in the Li Ka Shing Center, they would consider pursuing a warrant for the students’ arrest.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: #141823;">That two students attempting to expand trans peoples’ access to safe bathrooms were harassed, followed, and detained by the UC Police highlights some of the connections between interrelated forms of sanctioned violence: the harassment trans people face in public spaces, including at our universities; the securitization of partially-privatized UC buildings, such as the Li Ka Shing Center; and the militarization of UC and Berkeley City police departments. A coalition of student and community groups has recently been pushing back against police violence in Berkeley. On February 10, the UCB Black Student Union helped organize a march to city council, where students and community members called on the council to take action against racial profiling and against militarized policing throughout Berkeley. The coalition also continued to press for justice for Kayla Moore, a black trans woman who was killed in her home by Berkeley City Police on February 13, 2013. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: #141823;">Please take a moment to call or email Chancellor Dirks and share with him your thoughts about what happened today. You might consider demanding: 1) that UC Berkeley expedite the process of redesignating bathrooms as “all gender” in order to address the safety needs of trans and gender nonconforming people; and 2) that no student conduct or legal charges be brought against students for posting “all gender” restroom signs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #141823;">Chancellor Dirks: </span><span style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">(510) 642-7464; </span><a href="mailto:chancellor@berkeley.edu"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">chancellor@berkeley.edu</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOG_video_class" id="BLOG_video-20dce21f181e5e69" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="movie" value="https://www.youtube.com/get_player"><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="flashvars" value="flvurl=https://redirector.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?id%3D20dce21f181e5e69%26itag%3D5%26source%3Dblogger%26requiressl%3Dyes%26app%3Dblogger%26cmo%3Dsecure_transport%3Dyes%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1483442731%26sparams%3Dip,ipbits,expire,id,itag,source,requiressl%26signature%3D14A6A9E65EF01CAF53BC1A6F9ECAA1817CD87D6E.085B2E870E68854C29E15A476F92A1240EC79187%26key%3Dck2&amp;iurl=http://video.google.com/ThumbnailServer2?app%3Dblogger%26contentid%3D20dce21f181e5e69%26offsetms%3D5000%26itag%3Dw160%26sigh%3Do2S0Ns9Gv3ZwJsG5HewLMFK_YZw&amp;autoplay=0&amp;ps=blogger"><embed src="https://www.youtube.com/get_player" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="320" height="266" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashvars="flvurl=https://redirector.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?id%3D20dce21f181e5e69%26itag%3D5%26source%3Dblogger%26requiressl%3Dyes%26app%3Dblogger%26cmo%3Dsecure_transport%3Dyes%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1483442731%26sparams%3Dip,ipbits,expire,id,itag,source,requiressl%26signature%3D14A6A9E65EF01CAF53BC1A6F9ECAA1817CD87D6E.085B2E870E68854C29E15A476F92A1240EC79187%26key%3Dck2&iurl=http://video.google.com/ThumbnailServer2?app%3Dblogger%26contentid%3D20dce21f181e5e69%26offsetms%3D5000%26itag%3Dw160%26sigh%3Do2S0Ns9Gv3ZwJsG5HewLMFK_YZw&autoplay=0&ps=blogger" allowFullScreen="true" /></object></div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/03/please-take-action-students-seeking-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-3477475745997498471Mon, 09 Feb 2015 16:09:00 +00002015-02-09T08:09:56.082-08:00What University Administrators Gain from $300 Million in Cuts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kiRS41_jgjk/VNjabsh8Q6I/AAAAAAAABOs/XQlFK8LNyFI/s1600/madison.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kiRS41_jgjk/VNjabsh8Q6I/AAAAAAAABOs/XQlFK8LNyFI/s1600/madison.jpg" height="396" width="640" /></a></div><br /><i>Guest post by Lenora Hanson and Elsa Noterman, graduate students at University of Wisconsin, Madison.</i><br /><br />Over the past two weeks the University of Wisconsin System and UW-Madison administrations have gone on the defensive against the hemorrhaging of state support for higher education recently proposed in <a href="http://www.wpr.org/guide-whats-scott-walkers-new-budget-proposal">Scott Walker’s Biennial Budget</a>—including $300 million in budget cuts (the largest cut in the 44-year history of the UW System). But the current proposed budget cuts and university restructuring should be understood within a larger historical and political context—one in which a push for privatized education has happened not simply due to partisan divisions at the state Capitol, but also because of financial and material incentives for the UW System.<br /><br /><div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">The UW administration’s narrative, along with that of others in the local and national media, blames Scott Walker and tea-party Republicans for both recent and ongoing budgetary crises in higher education in Wisconsin. In part, memories of the historic resistance to Walker’s attack on labor in 2011 only fuels this narrative. As a result, anger about and actions against the budget are being directed towards the state Capitol. Sending campus and system-wide emails, talking to local and national media outlets, meeting with legislators and creating open forums on campuses to discuss the cuts with students, faculty and staff, UW System administrators are taking every opportunity to inveigh against the 13 percent cut in state funding—and emphasizing the inevitability of tuition increases and job losses if these cuts go through. But the administration’s defensive posture around state cuts to university funding is not new; indeed, it has provided the catalyst for much of the System’s rhetoric around austerity measures in the past. As Chancellor Blank made clear in October 2014, even maintaining current state contributions would require “implementing substantial cuts” within the university, one reason she has recommended <a href="http://www.channel3000.com/news/education/uw-chancellor-wants-to-raise-outofstate-tuition/24422470">considering increases to out-of-state undergraduate tuition</a>. This posturing arguably obscures the administration's ongoing efforts to consolidate control over the university, making them appear as passive respondents to a continuous Republican onslaught.<b>&nbsp;</b><br /><br /><br /><b>More of the same</b><br /><br />There is precedent in the UW System for trying to restructure the university and reduce reliance on state support, one that perhaps grows out of UW-Madison’s aggressive attempts to free itself from the burdens of state regulation. In 2011, then-Chancellor Biddy Martin infamously <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/116339939.html">held secret talks with Walker’s administration</a> to discuss what she called the “New Badger Partnership” (NBP), which would give UW-Madison autonomy from the state by making it, and it alone, a public authority (also known as a public-benefit corporation). Budgetary cuts and labor issues were at the forefront of critiques of the NBP. Less attention was paid to the fact that in the original version of the NBP, the UW-Madison would have won the ability to issue bonds (essentially debt plus interest) for its campus construction projects instead of relying on the state to do so. The NBP, at least as originally drafted, failed to be implemented due to public outcry and bipartisan legislative opposition. But in December 2012 a “Task Force on Restructuring and Operational Flexibilities” was put together to recommend to the state certain “flexibilities” that would be given to the entire System, and the Budget and the failed NBP had not provided specifically to UW-Madison. One of the recommendations issued was to grant the system the ability to lease or bond for their own projects:<br /><br /><img height="238" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ahb1KxzbP3hbIMGxcWhVZtDQPWDROLIxPnzkU9T5rFJ1MXNvOvUsL2-1sepkHHwgnVSjY_sV0Hacwb5XXSEUqFTsBASWa_Z1Ppn8zwH5OqgTf0o5QLm6cxs85LnOhX6BKg" width="640" /><br /><br />While the state disagreed with the Task Force recommendation to remove the state from the design and implementation of new buildings, they agreed that the System should be given the capacity to lease, or bond, their own projects. This ability, however, “would require statutory changes” (59) that the UW System did not have in 2012. <br /><br />In making an appeal to the state for greater control over capital projects, the Task Force made an important point for us to keep in mind. Of <i>all</i> UW System projects, nearly 60 percent each biennium are funded by university‐generated revenue and receive no taxpayer support. This means that only 40 percent of the construction projects built on UW System campuses are paid for by state tax dollars, and thus only 40 percent are built primarily or specifically for instructional purposes.<br /><br /><br /><b>Buildings Race</b><br /><br /><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Rw80qtJ0wpQ3glWVd-E-sFP58LyGaaC3fsdTrnXDT8a4unnRomG6YGCitWp6j_mwohsr29xz-DnIEoYU-37BxYGwsFb1pmJdqIfPySeLAM7kvcYApS1GlyxNuicNgtiOAg" /><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_fsDv0pkS8H7XZMbMxKTbYmvQj4qk0uBp2p98ZAZwcUP9-535m6axGJEuxvyI3CNXLRBo37sbawF9iF5_7NAaCsALeVAChySxOiiE9EmamF3Tz9pYqea9tqYDUJBBw-gXA" style="cursor: move;" /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />In their drive for increasing revenue, universities around the country are competing to attract the same wealthy out-of-state students to their campuses. In the fall 2014 semester—for the first time in at least fifteen years, <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2015/02/u-m_out-of-state_residents.html">over half of the students at the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan were from outside the state</a>. This followed the announcement last year of a <a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20140220/NEWS05/302200094/">$500 million building spree</a> at the university. At UW, out-of-state new undergraduate freshmen increased by 42 percent between 2003 and 2012—and these out-of-state students paid more than twice as much as their in-state classmates (UW Data Digest). To attract these non-resident students, administrators are increasingly taking on capital building projects and recreational amenities—such as upscale apartments, climbing walls, and food services. This buildings race—where universities are trying to out-build the competition—has lead to increases in tuition (the most flexible source of revenue). In Wisconsin, spending on non-instructional campus buildings has drastically increased in recent years (see above graph). On average, these building projects now cost students <a href="http://www.secfac.wisc.edu/senate/2014/0203/2470%20Ad%20hoc%20tuition%20report.pdf">$192 a year—and will continue to do so for up to 30 years</a>. Of course, this cost does not include the price of building maintenance, upkeep, and debt services (the interest that is paid—over many years—on the loans used to finance these projects). In the end, these building projects often cost more in debt service payments than the initial construction price-tag. Currently, costs and debt service are largely guaranteed by segregated fees and revenues generated from parking lots, dining services and other non-instructional services. But with the public authority model tuition is likely to become a significant—if not the primary—source for paying off bonds as well providing the capital necessary for taking on future debt.<br /><br /><br /><b>Pledging Tuition? </b><br /><br />Lo and behold, the statutory changes previously recommended by the UW Taskforce (see above) have emerged in the current budget bill proposed by Governor Walker, which grants bonding issuance and management to the UW System for those projects not backed by public monies, or general purpose revenues (60 percent of construction projects in the system). It explicitly allows the newly-formed UWSA Board of Regents to: “<i>issue bonds that are not public debt</i> and specifies that the state pledges that, unless bondholders are adequately protected, the state will not limit or alter any rights before the UWSA satisfies the bonds. <i>The bill eliminates all appropriations to the UW System under current law, except general purpose revenues for educational programs and the payment of certain construction debt</i>” (emphasis added 16-17).<br /><br />The latter section of the above quote is important because it seems to suggest that funds to pay for non-instructional construction costs and debt service (remember, the majority of construction projects on campus) are no longer guaranteed by the state, but by the UW Board of Regents (BOR) and its revenue sources. Previously, UW Madison’s construction costs and debt service were backed by the state through general obligation bonds, which means they were backed by a certain percentage raise in taxes that could be levied to cover costs. In other words, all previous bonds issued to pay for university construction projects—for both academic and non-academic purpose buildings—were at least hypothetically backed by public debt. But what are the revenue sources that the BOR will be able to rely on, then?<br /><br />If we needed a crystal ball to know where the UW System is going, we only need to look to the past. In 2009, Prof. Bob Meister at UC-Santa Cruz sent shockwaves through the University of California system <a href="http://cucfa.org/news/2009_oct11.php">when he revealed that</a> in order to continue funding the building boom on campuses across the state, the UC System had pledged access to 100 percent of tuition revenues to pay off the debt service on those projects should all other revenues be cut. Why was tuition promised? Because, “although tuition can be used for the same purposes as state educational funds, it can also be used for other purposes including construction, the collateral for construction projects, and paying interest on those bonds. None of these latter uses is permissible for state funds.” In other words, it is a more flexible source of revenue for the university administration. As of 2017, just as the state cuts enumerated by the current budget will get even worse for the UW System, tuition setting ability will rest wholly with the Board of Regents. So while the $300 million dollar cuts will certainly necessitate tuition increases, so will the System’s newly acquired control over construction projects if they follow the trend suggested above. And if the cuts have appeared as a surprise in recent weeks, the construction project “flexibilities” been in the works for years.<b>&nbsp;</b><br /><br /><br /><b>Flexible not free</b><br /><br />Given the amplifying costs of debt services for capital projects, there is then a greater incentive (and arguably a financial imperative) for the university administration to regularly increase the price of university education. At the University of California System and University of Michigan—where university administration has complete control over bonding (and are thus responsible for paying the debt services)—tuition rates have increased dramatically. Across the UC system, for example, between 2008 and 2010 student tuition rose by <a href="http://cucfa.org/news/2009_oct11.php">109 percent</a>. At the University of Michigan, tuition has <a href="http://occupyumich.tumblr.com/post/19735255245/university-of-michigan-student-debt-and-the-for">increased by 233 percent</a> since 1990. While the state of Wisconsin currently has a tuition freeze for in-state students until at least until 2017, <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/blank-to-address-proposed-budget-cuts-at-regents-meeting-b99439791z1-290947951.html">Chancellor Blank has asserted</a> that she will be lobbying the Board of Regents to raise tuition for students not affected by the freeze—including nonresident students and those in professional schools. Given that <a href="http://www.thewheelerreport.com/wheeler_docs/files/0203asm.pdf">after the last tuition freeze in 2004, tuition increased 18 percent</a>, it is also very likely that following 2017, the cost of education will increase for all UW students.<br /><br />This most recent attack on higher education in Wisconsin needs to be understood not strictly as a partisan issue, but as a new development within the university itself as a site of accumulation, investment and speculation. This development needs to be considered when we decide who our targets and who our allies are not only in responding to attacks, but in working towards building the university we want now and in the future.http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-university-administrators-gain.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (d)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-8679075814128240066Fri, 09 Jan 2015 18:11:00 +00002015-01-12T19:42:23.984-08:00Securitization, risk management, and the new university <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kNP2nNiTLGk/VLAZY6rasEI/AAAAAAAAAvw/bKepkXwsjY0/s1600/10830644_10154894415595585_7705471505708436349_o%2B(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kNP2nNiTLGk/VLAZY6rasEI/AAAAAAAAAvw/bKepkXwsjY0/s1600/10830644_10154894415595585_7705471505708436349_o%2B(1).jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>Talk delivered by Amanda Armstrong at the 2015 MLA Subconference. Vancouver, B.C./Coast Salish Territory. 1/9/15.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The germ for this presentation emerged as I was reading Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Golden Gulag</i>. Her second chapter argues that the prison construction boom in 1980s California was a response, on the part of those managing capital and governing the state, to four surpluses, including of capital, labor, land, and state capacity. With respect to capital surpluses, Gilmore shows how investment bankers, in search of profitable sites of investment, developed new financial mechanisms in the early eighties that enabled debt-financed prison construction to go forward without voter approval. These new financial mechanisms, called lease revenue bonds, had recently been put to use as well for the funding of construction projects at California colleges and universities. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In what follows, I want to talk a bit about these convergent shifts in prison and university financing, which Gilmore reads as ruling class responses to the protracted economic crisis of the seventies. While formally similar in certain respects, these parallel shifts also indicate a <a href="http://cacs.org/research/winners-and-losers-corrections-and-higher-education-in-california/">tilting</a> of the state toward policing and incarceration and away from direct support for education and other socially reproductive state functions. I’m interested in the aftereffects of these shifts, and particularly in what has changed over the last five years, following the crisis of 2008 and recent waves of struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">With respect to the universities, Gilmore describes how, in 1981 and ‘82, Frederic Prager, a well-connected underwriter in California, “worked with the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities to issue an innovative revenue bond whose proceeds [constituted] a forward-funded market for student loans” (98). Soon afterwards, the loan arrangement was extended to public universities as well. The terms of this particular revenue bond illustrate some of the emergent parameters of university financing in the early eighties. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At this moment, newly available student aid and loan money – funded and backed by state agencies – provided an incentive for universities to gradually increase tuition, and thus enabled them to secure the unencumbered revenue necessary to undertake debt-financed construction projects – projects that university managers justified on the grounds that new construction would help them compete for students. Prager and his associates at KPMG helped rationalize these new financial dynamics, publishing manuals of “best practices” for university managers. Their 1982 “Ratio Analysis in Higher Education” presented its readers with financial “ratios” that could be used to determine the proper balance of university revenues, operating costs, investments, and bond debts. Unsurprisingly, these apparently neutral ratios pushed university managers to funnel more capital into financial markets and to take on higher levels of construction debt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Similarly, Prager and his associates’ work developing new prison financing mechanisms enabled the California Department of Corrections to acquire over 2.5 billion dollars in state-backed lease revenue bonds over the 1980s, supplementing 2.5 billion in general obligation bonds, which the Department of Corrections used to expand prison capacity by approximately four hundred percent (101). This prison expansion was accompanied by the rewriting of criminal law and by the emergence of new forms of urban policing, surveillance, and spatial enclosure, outlined by Mike Davis in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">City of Quartz</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The assertiveness with which financial advisory firms in the 1980s worked to turn the prison and higher education industries into new sites of real estate investment and capital accumulation is especially striking when considered in relation to KPMG’s most recent, and much more reticent, <a href="http://policies.medschool.ucsf.edu/sites/policies.medschool.ucsf.edu/files/documents/NSS_Handbook.pdf">2010 edition</a> of “Strategic Financial Analysis for Higher Education,” the successor to their “Ratio Analysis in Higher Education.” In this most recent edition, Prager and his associates implicitly acknowledge that their earlier ratios had not been conservative enough to protect against financial meltdowns, and even that university managers probably shouldn’t have been relying on abstract ratios in making investment decisions in the first place. “</span><span style="background: white; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt;">Financial analysis is not a static exercise,” they write; “'Acceptable metrics' in one environment may not be desirable in another.”</span><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> In their contextualist 2010 edition, </span><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">the only advice the KPMG authors confidently assert is that central administrators must systematically incorporate a “risk management” framework into all dimensions of university governance, lest they be caught off guard again by financial or other shocks. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The University of California certainly has followed this prescription. The university’s Office of the President recently <a href="http://www.ucop.edu/risk-services/">established</a> an “Office of Risk Services,” and has begun convening regular “Risk Summits” and meetings of the “Risk Management Leadership Council.” This turn toward risk management can be read as marking the incorporation of security and surveillance techniques into the heart of public university management, including the management of university finances. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The variant of “risk management,” that has recently been taken up by University of California administrators is a composite thing, drawn together from disparate sources and remolded to fit local conditions. In part, risk management follows from the codification of internal accounting techniques that were developed in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, but only formally required of public companies following the 2002 ENRON scandal. As KPMG and other boosters insist though, risk management is not simply a matter of insurance or internal compliance mechanisms. It also entails new, more ambitious, modes of governance and control, first developed for the logistics and security industries. The logistics industry, contending since the 70s with elongated supply chains and just-in-time production, developed tracking and distribution practices to limit both the frequency and disruptive effects of delays across supply chains. As Deborah Cowen has shown, these new practices drew the logistics industry closer to security and military agencies. The notion of “supply chain security” indicates how logistics has come to rest upon a strategic relation to space; nodes and spans in supply chains, including ports, highway networks, ocean passages, and rail yards must be surveilled and enclosed by force in order to ensure the smooth flow of commodities. Thus, under the banner of supply chain security, the urban policing, surveillance, military, and logistics industries have become increasingly enmeshed since 2001.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://www.ucop.edu/enterprise-risk-management/_files/protiviti_faqguide.pdf">Documents</a> designed to introduce interested UC administrators to “Enterprise Risk Management” contain illustrations and categories drawn directly from the logistics industry, including just-in-time production and supply chain analysis.&nbsp;But these and other categories of risk management require a certain amount of translation to fit within university contexts.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">For the remainder of my talk, I want to discuss a few recent events that illustrate the contested local manifestations of risk management practices at UC Berkeley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">First, concerning new construction. As a result of anti-tuition and occupy mobilizations in 2011 and ’12, the University of California adopted a multi-year tuition freeze in the summer of 2012. At this same <a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.ca/2014/10/after-freeze-uc-privatization-since-2012.html">moment</a>, a spokesperson for UC Berkeley’s office of Capital Projects announced that future dorm construction would be outsourced to private developers in the form of ground lease agreements. Since then, other development projects are being privatized through similar agreements, both at Berkeley and on other California campuses. Not coincidentally, a 2012 Bain <a href="http://www.bain.com/Images/BAIN_BRIEF_The_financially_sustainable_university.pdf">report</a> on “The Sustainable University” encourages university managers to use ground lease agreements to reduce debt leverage and to avoid risk exposure attendant upon new development. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">This turn toward privatized construction – aligned with the project of risk management – has contributed to an intensified securitization of university space. Partially or fully privatized new buildings, such as the Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and the Energy Biosciences Institute, are each at least partially closed to the general public and require key card or other forms of securitized access. In February 2013, organizers with the Student of Color Solidarity Coalition<a href="http://studentofcolorsolidaritycoalition.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/collective-statement-regarding-the-february-13th-day-of-action/"> took over </a>the Blum Center to protest the appointment of Janet Napolitano as UC President -- a particularly glaring illustration of the university’s securitizing turn. The occupation of the Blum Center challenged as well the shift toward spatial enclosure at UC Berkeley and its racially exclusionary effects. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The enclosure of campus space also appears in university administrator and police anxieties toward the presence of “non-affiliates” on campus. As Brian Whitener and Dan Nemser <a href="http://reclamationsjournal.org/issue07_whitener_nemser_near_future.htm">note</a>, UC risk management templates identify the presence of non-affiliates (i.e., people perceived as having no direct tie to the university) as a factor that increases the risk profile of a given event. The non-affiliate is a<a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.ca/2012/04/on-non-affiliates-in-reynosokroll.html"> racialized figure</a>, which was made glaringly evident when UC Davis administrators, in justifying police violence against Occupy Davis protesters, attempted to associate the threat of sexual violence at occupy encampments with the presence of Oakland-based demonstrators on campus. The everyday campus police harassment of black students and workers on and near campus is linked to this anxiety over the presence of non-affiliates, and manifests a broader anti-black exclusionary logic, which can be traced back as well through recent privatizing reforms, the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, and the anti-affirmative action politics of the 1980s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Following acts of police violence against Occupy Davis, Berkeley, and Riverside protesters in 2011, then-President Yudof commissioned an internal review of campus police practices. <a href="http://campusprotestreport.universityofcalifornia.edu/documents/implementation-report.pdf">Recommendations</a> that emerged from this review align with the principles of risk management. Police responses to protests are to be managed by administration-led crisis response teams, and police are responsible for recording all demonstrations. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Before concluding, I want to turn briefly to recent actions in Berkeley and Oakland against anti-black police violence, considering them in relation to the rise of risk management and the intensification of securitization at and beyond the university. In the midst of larger uprisings in the bay area and nationally following the non-indictments of Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo, UC students were particularly galvanized when Berkeley police decided to use tear gas and batons to drive hundreds of students and other local residents ten blocks south of campus. Presumably, the police decided to force students away from campus because the demonstration’s original proximity to dorms and a commercial district meant that police could not secure the area and that the risk of costly property destruction was relatively high.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">While many students likened this act of police violence to the violence inflicted on students by police in 2011, the demonstrations that emerged in response were quite different. In 2011, students responded by holding strikes on campus, while this past December, students and other local residents gathered each night on the edge of campus, and marched along different routes through Berkeley and Oakland, stopping at police stations, shutting down highways and train lines, and destroying windows of banks, police cars, and chain stores. More <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/01/_black_brunch_protesters_stage_demonstrations_inside_businesses.html">recently</a>, Black Student Union members have marched through commercial districts of Berkeley, interrupting restaurant and commercial businesses by reading the names of black people killed by police or vigilante violence. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;">In traveling through Berkeley and Oakland, student protesters have refused to remain enclosed within the bounds of campus, or even in some cases to take political action</span><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;">as students</span></i><span style="background: white; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;">. In doing so, they have worked to de-activate the student / non-affiliate binary. They have also acted in a way that implicitly recognizes the increasing imbrication of university policing, urban policing, and supply chain security, as well as the similarly anti-black nature of these varied forms of policing.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In my introduction I referred to the “tilting” of the state toward incarceration and away from education, beginning in the eighties. As we’ve seen, this tilting is not simply a matter of a tipping of the scales of state funding toward the CDC and away from the UC. It also refers to a tilting forward – a shift toward a more martial posture – that has affected all state institutions, including the universities. Those assuming this posture don’t incline toward negotiation. It is this aggressive posture that we confront when we fight fee hikes; reclaim campus spaces; strike for better working conditions; or march to local nodes of global supply chains – ports, rail yards, commercial centers, and freeways – to challenge racist state violence.</span></div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"></div></div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2015/01/securitization-risk-management-and-new.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-914676923408588140Wed, 10 Dec 2014 01:40:00 +00002014-12-09T18:03:38.843-08:00Urgent: Call-in to support Berkeley -Black Lives Matter- arrestees <div class="p1"><span class="s1"><b><i>Urgent:</i> </b></span><span class="s2"><b>Call-in to support Berkeley&nbsp;</b></span><span class="s2"><b><i>Black Lives Matter</i> arrestees</b></span><b>&nbsp;</b></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p3">On Monday night, more than a thousand Berkeley students and community members marched west from UCB campus, in order to block highway I-80 as part of the ongoing movement against&nbsp;</div><div class="p3">anti-black state violence, and particularly the police murders of Eric Garner and Mike Brown.&nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p3">As one group of 200 or so protesters were marching near the freeway, they were kettled and arrested by police. Most of them were taken Monday night to Santa Rita jail, and are slowly being cited and released. At least one of those who traveled to the jail to support arrestees has herself been arrested. Additionally, there have been multiple reports from students being released from Santa Rita that the police are not returning their belongings. This is very irregular and cannot be justified legally. It is a serious problem for all those being released. People do not have needed phones, keys, computers, and other belongings. For students, it is significant as well in terms of their coursework: many of them have been denied their lecture notes, books, and other course materials, only a week before final examinations. To support arrestees: &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p3"><b>Please call UCB Chancellor Dirks (510-642-7464)</b> and demand that he call on Santa Rita administrators and local police to release all those arrested and their belongings.<br /><br /></div><div class="p3"><b>Please also call police</b> to demand the release of everyone arrested and all their belongings. Santa Rita jail: <b>(925-551-6500). </b>Alameda County Sheriffs office: <b>(510-272-6878)</b>.&nbsp;</div><div class="p3"><br /></div><div class="p3"><i>Please share and repost widely.</i>&nbsp;</div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/12/urgent-call-in-to-support-berkeley.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-3621135516717240889Thu, 04 Dec 2014 02:24:00 +00002014-12-18T12:38:13.052-08:00Updated: On the Democrats' Education Plan, Part 2: ResegregationOn Tuesday, state Democratic Party lawmakers <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_27050887/no-uc-tuition-hikes-but-middle-class-scholarship">presented</a> their 2015 plan for higher education. The most publicized aspects of the plan are, first, that it would marginally increase state contributions to the UC and, second, that it would freeze undergraduate in-state tuition. An in-state tuition freeze would be be much better than Napolitano's original proposal for 5% annual tuition hikes. <br /><br />But there's more to the Democrats' plan: it would also eliminate a recently-established middle class scholarship program, would tie CSU student support to timely completion of degree, and would raise UC out-of-state and international students' tuition by 17 percent, or approximately $4,000 dollars. These proposed out-of-state fee hikes would be more than three times those initially proposed by Napolitano, and would generate for the UC an estimated $82 million dollars of revenue next year.<br /><br />There are a number of reasons to oppose this plan, particularly its reliance on a $4,000 dollar tuition hike for out-of-state and international students. First, from the perspective of those students directly affected, the hike would involve a financial shock, almost certain to be managed by many through the taking on of even more debt. Those opposed to skyrocketing student debt levels and to the privatization of the university thus have reason to oppose the Democrats' plan to increase out-of-state and international students' debt levels, and to keep UC reliant on tuition revenue rather than on public funds. <br /><br />Furthermore, from the perspective of the student movement, the proposed hike severs the interests of various groups of current students and can be seen as an <a href="https://educationshouldbefree.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/california-wont-be-happy-until-the-last-regent-is-strangled-with-the-entrails-of-the-last-democrat/">attempt to divide</a> the nascent anti-fee hike movement by polarizing students on the basis of our place of origin and citizenship. For the sake of justice and the effectiveness of our movements, it's important to challenge the logic underlying this division of students. People from different places are all living and working together on our campuses, and many of us, regardless of place of origin, will continue living in California after graduation. So even if we base our efforts on an interest in supporting affordable education for California residents, the tuition hike plan is not OK, because all students are residents. In this way, the question of out-of-state tuition levels should be separated from the political question of what percentage of out-of-state students ideally would be admitted to the UCs. Those with different views on the latter can nevertheless unite to oppose fee hikes that would affect current "out-of-state" and international students.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w5WceWZamhc/VH-xHaztmHI/AAAAAAAAAs0/E40UINs833w/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2014-12-03%2Bat%2B4.52.59%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w5WceWZamhc/VH-xHaztmHI/AAAAAAAAAs0/E40UINs833w/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2014-12-03%2Bat%2B4.52.59%2BPM.png" height="320" width="255" /></a>But there is a much more destructive dimension to the Democrats' proposal<i> -- the further resegregation of the UCs&nbsp;along lines of race and class --</i>&nbsp;which only comes into focus when we broaden our frame of reference by considering the distribution of funding to the various UC campuses. As Chris Newfield&nbsp;<a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2012/01/racial-patterns-of-campus-budget.html">pointed out</a>&nbsp;in 2012,&nbsp;the UC Office of the President distributes its general fund revenues unevenly between the various campuses, and this structural unevenness involves the relative underfunding of campuses with higher percentages of Black and Latin@ students (UCR, UCM, UCSB, and UCSC). And, as Bob Samuel's has <a href="http://changinguniversities.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-uc-campus-funding-imbalance.html">noted</a>, it's only gotten worse since 2012. UC officials have not only admitted this resource inequity but have defended it: the Office of the President "stated that the university does not wish to jeopardize the achievements of the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses by shifting funds away to other campuses in an effort to provide an equal amount of general funds and tuition budget per student." As Newfield puts it, UCOP defines its job as protecting UC stratification rather than correcting it. <br /><br />With their education proposal, the California Democrats have apparently taken on as well the job of protecting and exacerbating stratifications between UC campuses. The reason their planned out-of-state tuition hike would further stratify the UCs by race and class is that the various campuses have sharply uneven capacities to attract out-of-state and international students, based largely on their relative name recognition and prestige. If they can't attract out-of-state students at higher tuition rates, they won't gain significant funds from the out-of-state tuition hike. To get a sense of this unevenness between campuses, here's a comparison of the percentages of in-state students enrolling at the various campuses in 2012: &nbsp; &nbsp;<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_mYJ9EP4PM0/VH-yfWrttII/AAAAAAAAAs8/58pN0vdIadI/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2014-12-03%2Bat%2B9.45.13%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_mYJ9EP4PM0/VH-yfWrttII/AAAAAAAAAs8/58pN0vdIadI/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2014-12-03%2Bat%2B9.45.13%2BAM.png" height="491" width="640" /></a><br />This graph above helps explain the charts below, which illustrate the difference between, on the one hand, the relative percentages of out-of-state and international students at the various campuses, and, on the other hand, the relative percentages of total enrollment at the campuses (based on 2012 data). The chart on the left can serve as a proxy for the percentages of the state Democrats' proposed out-of-state fee hike that would go to the various campuses. The chart on the right represents what would be a more equitable distribution of funds, which could be supplied if the state, rather than raising out-of-state fees, simply contributed an additional $82 million dollars to UC and earmarked percentages of the money for particular campuses. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tEryJU5SqxA/VH-6_UJOdQI/AAAAAAAAAtM/dps7dgRA_48/s1600/campuspercentages-page-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tEryJU5SqxA/VH-6_UJOdQI/AAAAAAAAAtM/dps7dgRA_48/s1600/campuspercentages-page-001.jpg" height="388" width="640" /></a></div>Seen from this perspective, the California Democrats' plan for out-of-state fee hikes looks much more like an effort to salvage funding at the flagship campuses while leaving all other campuses, and particularly those with higher percentages of Black and Latin@ students, out in the cold. And class and race stratifications are inextricably linked, as the following graph makes clear:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ScyZRubMSqo/VH-8VxxOpCI/AAAAAAAAAtY/1k2dBnYtyoM/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2014-12-03%2Bat%2B12.21.40%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ScyZRubMSqo/VH-8VxxOpCI/AAAAAAAAAtY/1k2dBnYtyoM/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2014-12-03%2Bat%2B12.21.40%2BAM.png" height="536" width="640" /></a></div>The Democrats' plan would thus have the effect of further underfunding campuses with relatively higher percentages of Black and Latin@ student enrollment and of working class student enrollment. Their plan promises the intensification of race and class inequalities within a UC system characterized by internal segregation. For this reason, as well as those identified above, the state Democrats' plan (SB15) should be vigorously opposed, and better <a href="http://keepcaliforniaspromise.org/3553">alternatives</a> should be advocated, by all those interested in just and equal public education in California. <br /><br /><i>Updated, December 18:</i>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-pol-uc-tuition-explainer-20141211-story.html#page=1">Apparently</a>, the state Democrats are considering proposals that involve even higher out-of-state tuition hikes, and are also considering capping the number of out-of-state and international student admissions at current levels, thus locking in the inequalities discussed above. From the details of Assembly Speaker Akins' plan:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"•Increase UC enrollment of California students by 10,000 over five years and cap enrollment of out-of-state students at 2014-2015 levels.<br />•Increase the tuition premium for out-of-state students by $5,000, which would raise an additional $100 million annually."</blockquote>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/12/on-democrats-education-plan-part-2.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-1738461758077891354Thu, 04 Dec 2014 00:26:00 +00002014-12-03T16:26:58.416-08:00On the Democrats' Education Plan, Part 1: Class War<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Reposted from <a href="https://educationshouldbefree.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/california-wont-be-happy-until-the-last-regent-is-strangled-with-the-entrails-of-the-last-democrat/">Education Should be Free</a>:&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><i>"California Won't be Happy Until the Last Regent is Strangled From the Entrails of the Last Democrat"&nbsp;</i></div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">A&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://educationshouldbefree.wordpress.com/2014/11/24/fuck-the-regents-and-fuck-jerry-brown-too/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">previous communiqué</a></strong>&nbsp;announced our opposition to both the UC Regents and Governor Brown: “Fuck the Regents, and Fuck Jerry Brown Too.” It is now necessary for us to declare our opposition to the latest plan for privatization put forward by the California Democratic Party.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The cowardly California Democrats, fearing the retribution of the students and people of California, have announced a new plan to avoid fee hikes. But their plan proposes cutting scholarship programs for middle-class Californian students and raising tuition for out-of-state students by over $4,000. Let’s be clear about the strategy they’re employing: instead of imposing cuts on all students, the Democrats intend to attack certain constituencies, middle-class and out-of-state students, the classic imperial maneuver of “divide and conquer.” They want to divide us, leave us to fight over the scraps left by the state.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://educationshouldbefree.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/sorbonne-occupied.jpg" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="sorbonne occupied" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-69" src="https://educationshouldbefree.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/sorbonne-occupied.jpg?w=590" style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border-radius: 4px; border: 3px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); display: block; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px auto; outline: 0px; padding: 5px;" /></a></div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">What’s more, in a crude and grotesque application of their neoliberal ideology, the Democrats propose offering “completion incentive grants” to create “financial incentives” for students in the CSU system to graduate faster. Underlying this move is a frank acknowledgement that the education system has&nbsp;<i>completely failed us</i>: standardized test-based public education has not prepared students for college, and the university does not provide students the resources they need to finish according the administration’s schedule.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Despite their awareness of the fact that students often need to&nbsp;<i>work full-time</i>&nbsp;to keep up with the cost of living while they go to school, the Democrats are proposing the use of incentives to impose a form of&nbsp;<i>factory speed-up</i>: encouraging students to drive themselves into the ground and cut corners in their education, just to win a bonus that isn’t even worth a week of a Chancellor’s income.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Of course, they claim they will help speed students&nbsp;along by throwing money into more classes, as well as more advising and support. But don’t mistake this for a concern with your education. “If we invest more, we expect better efficiencies,” the Senate Leader shamelessly confessed to the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article4242343.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><i>Sacramento Bee</i></a>. Students are being reduced to&nbsp;<i>pure financial flows</i>, to sources of income that can be manipulated and controlled by the unholy alliance of big capital and Homeland Security. No wonder they want to admit more students.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The California Democrats’ plan is not a plan to create better, more accessible, or more democratic university. It is an insidious form of privatization and financialization that&nbsp;<i>converts your education into a flow of money, and your life into endless work</i>. It represents another form of class warfare waged against the people of California. They can be sure that the people of California will respond in kind.</div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/12/on-democrats-education-plan-part-1.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-9028045831475999206Sat, 22 Nov 2014 02:14:00 +00002014-11-21T18:14:45.285-08:00A Letter of Fire from Egypt<i>Reposted from: <a href="https://aletterfromegypt.wordpress.com/">A Letter from Egypt</a>:</i><br /><br />Dear Santa Cruz and Berkeley Occupiers,<br /><br />We are students and faculty from Cairo writing to you from within the folds and dust of an ongoing revolution. Many of our own universities are now occupied by the military, and we now find ourselves fighting against a regime that grows worse than the one that our revolution had initially rose up against only 3 years ago. When we first heard that you had occupied your universities, we were inspired by and felt close to your revolt that we see as resonating with our own.<br /><br />We think it is important to say that our struggles arise from distinct histories, but we also know that the problems we all face can only ever be challenged by a cascade of a thousand revolts, revolts like yours that involve both a struggle for your own lives but equally for the lives of others. Our revolts are ultimately attempts to become something together, to become a part of a collectivity that is as much emancipatory as it is diverse. In your occupations against the tuition increases in your universities, we hope you find yourselves fighting alongside new and unanticipated friends and allies, people found in your revolt that have joined you in inhabiting spaces that you have made your own. We hope that you consider us among these new friends as well.<br /><br />We don’t find it so urgent to distinguish between whether the attacks on our lives come in the name of austerity, security, or civility, but instead recognize that each of these attacks and each of our revolts against them are connected by shared logics: the logic of what you’ve called in your communique the “capitalist economy of accumulation” and the opposing logic of what we’ll call in this letter “creativity and solidarity”. In this spirit, we write in solidarity with all of those who look forward and see a hopeless future, and in return demand a different present and occupy it. We write in solidarity with you who have been ignored by society’s institutions, and in return have seized them. We write in solidarity with you who the global powers hope will suffer injustice alone, and instead have found one another on the barricades of revolt. We write in solidarity with you who were born into a world of fear, and yet have learned to light fires that cast fear away.<br /><br />With fires against fear,<br /><br />-Students and Faculty from Cairo’s Universitieshttp://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-letter-of-fire-from-egypt.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-2009986325444140341Sat, 22 Nov 2014 01:00:00 +00002014-11-21T17:00:47.926-08:00Why Humanities 2? or: End the Administration Reposted from <a href="http://educationshouldbefree.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/why-humanities-2-or-end-the-administration/">Education Should be Free</a>:<br /><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The UC administration wraps its tentacles around all of our lives. And it has established many nodes from which to strangle us; Kerr Hall is only one hub of a much larger amorphous beast. &nbsp;Given this fact, students had a lot of options when we began considering an occupation. How, then, did we choose this particular administrative base of operations, Humanities 2, for our action?</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">In fact, it is not a difficult question, and everyone here is clear on the answer: this building houses the office of a particularly smarmy figure, one Dean Sheldon Kamieniecki—a perversely enthusiastic agent of austerity. This person was responsible for slashing whole departments as soon as he got the chance, Community Studies being one notable example. Most recently, he tried to sack five or six Social Science staffers last year, most of whom make roughly $40,000, and who, as any student can tell you, are absolutely indispensable to the day-to-day functioning of the university and central to the academic lives of students. Kamieniecki himself made $206,000 last year, and nobody knows what he does.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><img alt="A montstous Dean Kamieniecki enjoys a snack." class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-9" height="300" src="https://educationshouldbefree.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/slugmonster.jpg?w=225&amp;h=300" style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border-bottom-left-radius: 4px; border-bottom-right-radius: 4px; border-top-left-radius: 4px; border-top-right-radius: 4px; border: 3px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); display: block; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px auto; outline: 0px; padding: 5px;" width="225" /></div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Last fall, a group of students saw Kamieniecki entering this building and confronted him about the proposed layoffs: “How do you justify firing six workers who we all depend on?”</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">“It’s simple math. We have to make cuts. What else could you cut?”</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">“Well, we saw that you make over $200,000 a year.”</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">“So what? I should just quit my job then, I guess.”</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Silence and a stare made clear our agreement with that plan. A scoff was all we got back.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">But the point is not merely rhetorical: Imagine a university where the workers and students who make the place run also get to run the place. And where people whose primary job is to make cuts and give “mathematical” defenses of those cuts didn’t have to exist.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">That is a university we could live with.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">In this sense, this story is not only about Kamieniecki. UC President Janet Napolitano (salary $578,000) was recently quoted citing “arithmetic” &nbsp;in defense of the need “to look at a whole range of things” to resolve the school’s financial situation. Predictably, in the course of a month, the task went from “looking at” to actually imposing a 27% tuition increase. How quickly a look turns into an act! The Regents’ discerning eyesight is matched only by their own efficiency.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">These administration figures hide behind the veneer of mathematics in order to carry out their jobs. It makes things seem very complicated. In reality, it’s very simple: they raise tuition, attack workers, cut student services. In concert with the Regents, they make choices about how this university functions and where its resources go, and they make the wrong choices. Unsurprisingly, a lot of those resources go to admins and Regents themselves via high salaries, debt-vehicles and real-estate deals.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Unfortunately for the administrators, even if we take them at their word, the discussion of math here reveals their own redundancy. I propose, therefore, that as a test we replace all administrators with a very mathematical computer. If everything is dictated by numbers, then this computer can probably do their jobs for a lot less money.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">But this will also make our job easier! For then, we can spend less time tracking these people down and denouncing them, and simply smash the computer.</div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.882353); border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.1000003814697px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-top: 14px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">For the time being however, this occupation will serve as a similar sort of test. We will keep Kamieniecki away from the levers that he pulls, and what will become clear is that no one is worse off for his absence. Either the arithmetic of austerity will simply run its course without him, or, if we’re lucky, it will falter, and our lives will surely improve. In short, like all UC administrators, he’s either superfluous or pernicious. Either way, we don’t want him.</div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/11/why-humanities-2-or-end-administration.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-4168355711029162003Fri, 21 Nov 2014 04:16:00 +00002014-11-20T20:17:27.456-08:00A Communiqué from the UCSC Occupation of Humanities 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rPGib9H1T2Q/VG68FsbddkI/AAAAAAAAAsQ/t6v7eHNMCII/s1600/humanitiesucsc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rPGib9H1T2Q/VG68FsbddkI/AAAAAAAAAsQ/t6v7eHNMCII/s1600/humanitiesucsc.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div><div class="p1">The University of California was once a tuition-free and public institution. Now the students are facing yet another tuition hike. The most recent attempt to raise tuition in 2009 was successfully frozen by the courageous and necessary action of students, yet this week, the UC Regents have approved a 5% tuition increase each year for the next five years. This is in addition to the numerous increases that have occurred since the new millennium which amount to what will now be a 500% increase by 2020. Governors and legislatures have come and gone, and have continually spouted rhetoric without taking any action.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">In addition to tuition increases, students face larger class sizes, fewer classes, cuts to student services, and ultimately, are paying more for less education. Of course, these measures disproportionately affects those already marginalized--women, students of color, queer students, and many more. A private business parades in the mask of a public university.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">All of these issues and more are a direct result of the failed leadership of the UC Regents, a ruling junta appointed by the governor—yet rebuked in this move even by him!</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">Privatization threatens the promise of education for all. With this most recent tuition hike, UC</div><div class="p1">students are being crushed; this is just one symptom of a global effort to privatize everything. Our</div><div class="p1">water, lands and studies are being held hostage to further benefit those at the top of a horrifying</div><div class="p1">capitalist economy of accumulation. It extends far beyond the university, from the extraction of</div><div class="p1">natural resources, to the oppression and exploitation of laborers. We are saddled with obligations to</div><div class="p1">work and incur debts at the expense of our humanity and the habitat we depend on. As students,</div><div class="p1">our future labor is put on lien for the privilege of attending a once free, now mediocre, university.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">The hypocrisy we face is astounding: the Regents gave 20% raises to a few campus Chancellors just</div><div class="p1">weeks before hoisting more debt onto vulnerable students. Regent Bonnie Ress said they were</div><div class="p1">correcting an “injustice” by bumping people up from $360,000 to $383,000. This would be</div><div class="p1">laughable if it weren’t so disgusting. Never mind that the chancellors are already in the top half</div><div class="p1">percent of income earners in the United States. But with ten CEOs, four corporate lawyers, two</div><div class="p1">investment bankers and merely one student on the board of Regents, it is not surprising that the</div><div class="p1">priorities of this institution are skewed towards the interests of those at the top.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">For all these reasons, we are occupying the Humanities 2 building at UC Santa Cruz. We are using</div><div class="p1">the space to do many things: to think, to strategize, to finally meet the fellow students we sit next to</div><div class="p1">every day. Most of all, however, we are simply inhabiting a space that is ours in a world where</div><div class="p1">nothing seems to be for us.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">The students here are fed up, but we have not given up hope on one another, and we have not given</div><div class="p1">up hope on you. This message is intended for our fellow students here at UCSC, but it is also for</div><div class="p1">everyone else: we want to hear from alumni; from parents; from the people in our communities;</div><div class="p1">from our fellow students at other UCs; from our young comrades in elementary, middle and high</div><div class="p1">schools; from the workers and teachers who make this university run. We may only be in this</div><div class="p1">building temporarily, but we want to build something bigger, something lasting, and we want all of</div><div class="p1">you to be a part of it.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">The Regents have passed their tuition hike, but this is far from over. We are calling on our allies to</div><div class="p1">help us grow: more occupations will surely follow (we don’t know who plans them!), and more</div><div class="p1">strikes, more disrupted meetings, more barricades, more students and allies in the street. All of this</div><div class="p1">not to return to the past, but to build a new future.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">We will be unmanageable until such time as there are no managers—until the Regents, tuition, and privatization are washed away in a wave of democracy.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-communique-from-ucsc-occupation-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-4438617565699065205Thu, 20 Nov 2014 16:31:00 +00002014-11-20T08:31:32.564-08:00Who Are the "Legitimate" Occupants of Wheeler Hall?<br />An internal email sent out this morning by the UCB facilities manager. Very invested in distinguishing "legitimate" occupants from the "suspicious or dangerous" occupants.<br /><blockquote>-------- Original Message -------- <br /> <b> Subject:</b> Wheeler Hall is Occupied by Protestors [TODAY! - 11-20-14] <br /> <b>Date:</b> Thu, 20 Nov 2014 07:19:18 -0800 <br /> <b>From:</b> Mark DAVIS <a href="mailto:medavis@berkeley.edu"><medavis berkeley.edu=""></medavis></a> <br /> <br /> <br /> Dear Wheeler Hall Occupants, <div><br /> </div><div>UCPD has notified us that Wheeler Hall is occupied by about 70 protestors who are mostly concentrated in the main lobby of level 1.</div><div><br /> </div><div>As of now, UCPD has no plans to disperse these protestors and they have indicated that building operations and classes should take place as scheduled.</div><div><br /> </div><div>UCPD is on site and closely monitoring the activity of these people and will notify us if there are any changes to the status of this occupation.&nbsp; The LSFO office, in turn, will share this information asap with building occupants.</div><div><br /> </div><div>As I suggested yesterday afternoon, I would recommend occupants (non classrooms) lock their doors and post signs to direct their legitimate visitors.</div><div><br /> </div><div>Beyond that, UCPD has requested that building occupants be vigilant and report suspicious or dangerous activity to UCPD directly.</div><div><br /> </div><div>Occupants can always call me or our office if they are unsure of what to do or if they need help addressing any of these issues. &nbsp;</div><div><br /> </div>Thank you,<br /> <br clear="all" /> <div>Mark Davis</div><div>Facilities Manager<br /> </div><div>College of Letters &amp; Science Facilities Office</div><div>150A Barrows Hall</div></blockquote>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/11/who-are-legitimate-occupants-of-wheeler.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (d)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-5834105672734680676Thu, 20 Nov 2014 04:51:00 +00002014-11-19T20:51:52.113-08:00Wheeler Hall Occupied; Mass Convergence Monday at NoonAt the Berkeley general assembly tonight, those gathered voted to call for a mass convergence and walkout this coming Monday at noon in front of Wheeler Hall as well as to immediately begin an open occupation of the Wheeler lobby, which is ongoing.<br /><br /><i>Reposted from <a href="http://www.theberkeleygraduate.com/2014/11/tuition-hikes-protests/">The Berkeley Graduate</a>:&nbsp;</i><br /><br /><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">“1-2-3-4 tuition fees are class war! 5-6-7-8 students will retaliate!”</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">Blue and yellow lights on Wheeler Hall illuminated students chanting in the rain this evening, following a vote today in San Francisco that brings the University of California one step closer to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.theberkeleygraduate.com/2014/11/tuition-hike/" style="color: #0088cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">a potential 28% tuition increase</a>.</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">The UC&nbsp;Board of Regents’ Long-Range Planning Committee approved&nbsp;7-2 a plan to increase tuition by up to 5% for 5 years, yielding a 28 percent tuition hike, in addition to creating quotas to accept more out-of-state and international students, who pay higher tuition. The two dissenting votes<a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-raises-tuition-20141119-story.html" style="color: #0088cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">came</a>&nbsp;from Governor Jerry Brown and student Regent Sadia Saifuddin. UC President&nbsp;<a href="http://www.theberkeleygraduate.com/tag/napolitano/" style="color: #0088cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Janet Napolitano</a>, however,&nbsp;is strongly pushing for this plan, on which the full&nbsp;24-member Board of Regents will vote tomorrow at UCSF.</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">A UC&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Hundreds-protest-UC-tuition-hikes-5903912.php" style="color: #0088cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Berkeley student was arrested</a>&nbsp;during the UCSF protests today, though campus police stayed several hundred feet away from this evening’s Berkeley event, leaning on a metal blockade near Sather Gate. The highly-organized and collaborative student gathering assembled under the tree on Dwinelle Plaza to share updates and ideas before regrouping&nbsp;into small circles to plan a&nbsp;Statewide Day of Action this coming&nbsp;Monday.</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">Speakers used a megaphone to share updates from, draw parallels to, and express solidarity with organizing in Palestine,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/27472-a-silence-that-speaks-ayotzinapa-and-the-politics-of-listening" style="color: #0088cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Ayotzinapa</a>,&nbsp;and&nbsp;Ferguson.</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">The crowd clapped in frustrated agreement when&nbsp;<a href="http://blogs.berkeley.edu/author/rshabazz/" style="color: #0088cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Rasheed Shabazz</a>&nbsp;pointed out the pattern of&nbsp;militarization across these struggles,&nbsp;as the University naming former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to the&nbsp;UC Presidency epitomizes. Shabazz urged: “education is a right, not a privilege: the machine must be stopped…you have to keep organizing!”</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;"><a href="http://www.bamn.com/tag/yvette-felarca" style="color: #0088cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Yvette Felarca</a>&nbsp;reported on&nbsp;the&nbsp;Regents’ meeting with optimism: “This is not the end. Tomorrow is not the end. However they vote, it’s just the beginning.” Felarca&nbsp;reminded the audience that&nbsp;although the Regents will probably pass the plan in tomorrow’s vote, that the plan’s implementation&nbsp;is conditional on the University not receiving an additional $91 Million in the State Budget announced December 1st. The sum is relatively insignificant given the State’s full budget, and Governor Brown has so vociferously opposed the fee hike, that he will hopefully use his full influence to secure the necessary&nbsp;additional funds.</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">How&nbsp;Brown chooses to&nbsp;support&nbsp;students in preventing the fee increases&nbsp;will indicate his true allegiances. Fee hikes represent privatization, a process&nbsp;Brown has previously supported, for example, encouraging the University to&nbsp;privatize through online classes.</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">Felarca related how thoroughly the peaceful, if passionate, student protests shook the Regents, one of whom&nbsp;“couldn’t believe that the protestors were so angry that people in suits had to fight their way into the room!”</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">Attesting to student protests’ importance and power, Jasmine Schatz told this reporter, “student apathy is a huge problem on this campus…if we don’t keep showing up they’ll get comfortable and we’ll lose our opportunity to enact change” The&nbsp;second year undergraduate Italian Studies major took BART and Muni over to UCSF early this morning to be there by 6am to protest.</div><div style="-webkit-transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out; background-color: white; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; transition: font-size 0.5s ease-in-out, left 0.7s ease-in-out, right 0.7s ease-in-out;">As small groups strategized for the Statewide Day of Action this coming&nbsp;Monday, Felarca remarked that though teach-ins, walk-outs, rallies, and other gatherings would be valuable, “I think we ought to occupy. It is time.”</div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/11/wheeler-hall-occupied-mass-convergence.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-4990386732491035234Thu, 20 Nov 2014 01:00:00 +00002014-11-19T17:11:39.034-08:00Students block UC CFO Brostrom from entering Regents meeting <span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4444446563721px; line-height: 21.466667175293px;">At least for a time today, students <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgFhCYRPMaU">blocked</a> UC CFO Nathan Brostrom, one of the <a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2010/03/heckofajob-brostrom.html">primary architects</a> of UC privatization who used to work at JP Morgan, from entering today's Regents meeting.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.5454540252686px; line-height: 21.466667175293px;">At the meeting, the Regents ultimately voted on a multi-year plan that could result in 27% tuition hikes.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/FgFhCYRPMaU" width="560"></iframe> <br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vFZdvX6z29Y" width="560"></iframe> <span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.5454540252686px; line-height: 21.466667175293px;">&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.5454540252686px; line-height: 21.466667175293px;">Students also turned away from this entrance UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who three years ago justified the police pepper spraying of UC Davis students -- students who were acting in part against a proposed 81% tuition hike. Three years ago, students blocked the proposed tuition hikes through mass strikes, encampments, and mobilizations that lasted through the spring. This year, with only two weeks of mobilization, over three hundred students travelled from around the state to take action against the tuition hikes at today's Regents meeting. It is only beginning.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.5454540252686px; line-height: 21.466667175293px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.5454540252686px; line-height: 21.466667175293px;">&nbsp;</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gOUrTA7bL7k/VG07hf3vIJI/AAAAAAAAAr0/0HhYENPN1tA/s1600/katehi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gOUrTA7bL7k/VG07hf3vIJI/AAAAAAAAAr0/0HhYENPN1tA/s1600/katehi.jpg" height="348" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Having been confronted with her support for police violence, Katehi responded: "You are woefully misinformed."</i></div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/11/students-block-uc-cfo-brostrom-from.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-9152523540417367726Sun, 16 Nov 2014 23:41:00 +00002014-11-16T15:41:48.932-08:00Predictable <div class="p1"><i>by Rei Terada</i></div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">Having previously agreed with Governor Brown not to raise tuition for three years ending in spring 2016, the UC Regents have now unilaterally broken the agreement. Give UC more funds, the Regents say, or we'll raise tuition 5% in 2015--and another 5% a year for at least four years after that. While the Regents claim to negotiate on behalf of those who use the university--students, staff and faculty--their new gambit instead shows the difference between the Regents and higher Administration, on one hand, and "those who use" the university on the other. For organizations like the unions and faculty associations would of course like more funds from the legislature, too. But those groups aren't demanding that students pay up if the legislature doesn't. To them, it's obvious that another tuition increase wouldn't help California students, and that it's counterproductive to threaten to do something counterproductive. Contrary to UCOP's PR campaigns in favor of a "return to aid funding model" (high tuition, high aid), student debt has been rising during this period of "high aid." It's been <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/11/hiking-to-nowhere-ucop-doubles-down-on.html">shown</a> that when working class students have to use up their Pell grants on high tuition, they wind up working longer hours and going into tens of thousands of dollars of debt for housing and living expenses. Yet this is what the Regents are willing to bring about. And Mary Gilly, the chair of the Faculty Senate, lines the Senate up behind the administration more plainly than ever by <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-ln-uc-tuition-20141106-story.html">calling</a> the tuition increase an "unfortunate" but "good option."</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">In many ways the tuition increase proposal looks more like an intent than a coercion tactic. More state funding "is probably not likely," Gilly notes (ibid.). UCOP has already developed a strategy for justifying the increases regardless of their pressure-value: (1) they could be worse, being "not . . . more than 5%" a year; (2) they would feed the "return to aid funding model" (according to an email sent to staff on Friday by Michelle Whittingham, Associate Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management at UCSC); and (3) they would offer "predictability."&nbsp; UCOP's press release <a href="http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/long-term-stability-plan">euphemizes</a> the raise by calling it a "stability plan." But stability, predictability and not-being-more than 27% (at the end of the period, tuition would be 27% over its current base) are all empty qualities that drain the increase of its positive content, which is, obviously, revenue on the backs of students. A 5% increase will pay more than 4% a year from the legislature, even after return-to-aid. If that wasn't so the increase could not be proposed at all. At the same time, as Michael Meranze observes, "UCOP's proposal actually <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/11/hiking-to-nowhere-ucop-doubles-down-on.html">leaves open</a> the possibility of up to a 9% tuition increase" if Governor Brown is uncooperative--and that would have the most point of all. Technically, <i>no</i> ceiling for this scenario is mentioned in UCOP's announcement. Its language is: "tuition would not increase by more than 5 percent annually for five years, <i>provided the state maintains its current investment commitment</i>" (my italics). And so finally, even "predictability" is erased, since UCOP's statement merely says that it will be there unless it's not.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">In other words, the Regents' proposal is indeed predictable. It repeats the logic of their moves against the most vulnerable segments of the University in 2009--the 32% increase and layoff of 2000 workers--only now that logic is actually cast as a form of support. Their threat reveals that the Administration does not represent the University to the legislature. It's rather a third force, willing to sell out parties on either side of it so long as it gets paid. Maybe it will be useful for people in the University to point out to the state that the Administration is now treating the legislature in the way it has treated its own community up to this point. In the past five years the Administration has been an antagonist, not a bargaining partner--<a href="http://cloudminder.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-president-of-university-of.html">willing to break</a> and disavow agreements, we see now, <a href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/UC-resists-law-requiring-disclosure-of-5895688.php#/0">obscure</a> data, and target the vulnerable while making no sacrifices of its own. For in the same period that legislative funding has declined, Administration <a href="http://ucbfa.org/2013/01/uc-management-bloat-updated/">has expanded</a>, roughly doubling since 2000. The Regents just saw fit to raise the Chancellors' salaries by 20%.&nbsp; As Meranze <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/11/hiking-to-nowhere-ucop-doubles-down-on.html">notes</a>, in 2013-14 UCOP's budget<b> </b>in 2013-14<b> </b>was about $587,000,000, while the budget for the whole Santa Cruz campus was $633M. The tenor of the Regents' address to the state government sounds familiar to those who've had to "negotiate" with it during this time: it is of a piece with its unilateral form of governance. You don't have to be a fan of the state government to think toward it something like "See? They're willing to pepper-spray you, too."</div><br /><div class="p1">The legislature would be justified in demanding a correction of these conditions. This is something it could do rather than never talk to the Regents again, tempting as that must be. Instruction is 21% of the budget. It's always unclear whether funds will be used for education rather than administrator salaries, pet projects like MOOCs, donor-invented capitalist-in-training <a href="http://www.due.uci.edu/LaunchBlumCenter.pdf">programs</a>, real estate ventures, and other forms of development enriching an elite class only. The legislature would be within its rights to require that UCOP cut itself back to former levels and that any new funds--from the state or from tuition--go to instruction and student services. More to the point, regardless of what the Academic Council or the legislature will do, people inside the university will keep doing what they can, both to demand such economic justice as is available and to create forms of thought and relation that might support, finally, the unpredictable.</div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/11/predictable.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-5036617525307815241Mon, 10 Nov 2014 18:58:00 +00002014-11-10T14:21:52.869-08:00The State Funding Sleight-Of-Hand: Some Thoughts on UC's Proposed Tuition Hike<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"></span>Now that the UC administration has begun <a href="http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2014/11/what-campaign-first-leaks-on-tuition.html">a full-fledged public relations campaign to raise tuition</a> by about 5 percent per year for the next five years (adding up to an over 25 percent hike in total—if you calculate it out, it’s a 27.6 percent hike by 2019), it’s worth taking a second to think about how money moves through the university. As always, administrators justify the tuition hike by talking about how funding from the state has decreased. In a <a href="http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/default/files/chancellors_%20statement.PDF">joint statement</a> last Thursday, the chancellors of the ten UC campuses wrote the following: “State funding for the University is still $460 million below what it was in 2007-08, even though we are educating thousands more California students.” The proposed tuition hikes, they suggest, are necessary to make up for the difference.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>This argument about the decline in state funding is a reasonable one, made by neoliberal university administrators and many defenders of public education alike. But the argument also has some pretty significant blind spots. The point isn't that state funding hasn't declined, but that this real decline doesn't actually do all the work UC administrators are suggesting it does. Let’s see what’s really going on.<br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1vsilNE23cw/VGEGAXjTO-I/AAAAAAAABKU/f4ePuBvtNk4/s1600/UC%2B2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1vsilNE23cw/VGEGAXjTO-I/AAAAAAAABKU/f4ePuBvtNk4/s1600/UC%2B2013.jpg" height="348" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oH8RkONI-rQ/VGEFuVupbgI/AAAAAAAABKM/iwbUMsWuaZ0/s1600/state%2Bfunding%2B07-08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oH8RkONI-rQ/VGEFuVupbgI/AAAAAAAABKM/iwbUMsWuaZ0/s1600/state%2Bfunding%2B07-08.jpg" height="175" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"> </span></div><br />These data come from <a href="http://www.ucop.edu/financial-accounting/financial-reports/annual-financial-reports.html">the UC’s publicly available financial reports</a>, one from <a href="http://finreports.universityofcalifornia.edu/index.php?file=07-08/pdf/fullreport_08.pdf">2007-2008</a> and the other from <a href="http://finreports.universityofcalifornia.edu/index.php?file=12-13/pdf/fullreport-1213.pdf">2012-2013</a> (for some reason, that’s the most recent report available on the site). Let’s start with the data on state funding. One thing that’s interesting to note here is that <i>state funding is not continuously declining</i>—in fact, it actually increased by about $400 million from 2006-2008 and again by about $200 million from 2012-2013 (as a result of Proposition 30). Furthermore, as the text below the graph notes, “[t]he last year that educational appropriations were above $2.9 billion was 2003.” So we could argue that between 2003 and 2008 state funding remained more or less constant. Obviously, the financial crisis, which hit the following year, interrupted this trend. Still, from 2011-2012, there’s a big drop in state funding, but the following year it begins to rise again.<br /><br />In any case, the actual decline of state funding from 2008-2013 is $821 million ($1.06 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars). <br /><br />So where are UC administrators getting that $460 million figure from? It probably has to do with the fact that state funding has actually continued to increase since the passage of Proposition 30 in 2012. Anyway, we’re just using the financial report data here because it’s the most easily accessible and has these convenient three-year comparisons. Either way, we're more than giving them the benefit of the doubt here on the question of state disinvestment.<br /><br />Now let’s look at the change in tuition revenue (the 2013 numbers are above).<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_Dena1Z8As/VGEGt6wxT8I/AAAAAAAABKc/4Dm8yOlNzzE/s1600/tuition%2B08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_Dena1Z8As/VGEGt6wxT8I/AAAAAAAABKc/4Dm8yOlNzzE/s1600/tuition%2B08.jpg" height="112" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"></span></div><br />The first thing we notice is that, unlike fluctuating state appropriations, tuition revenue has steadily and consistently increased over this entire period. This is due in part to rising enrollment and in part to tuition hikes. Recall that state funding was actually increasing between 2006 and 2008, but nevertheless the regents were still raising tuition by at least 5 percent per year. <br /><br />The actual increase in tuition revenue from 2008-2013 is $1.48 billion ($1.32 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars). <br /><br />Over the period in question, <i>tuition revenue grew significantly more than state funding fell</i>. That extra $300 million in inflation-adjusted dollars is nearly three times as much as the proposed tuition hike will bring in. In spite of the story that administrators continue to tell, the UC’s own data show that tuition revenue has more than made up for the decline in state funding. If this were all that was going on, there should be no deficit. Of course, if you compare current levels of funding to the 1970s or 1980s, you’ll find a big difference. But you’ll also find that expenditures have increased a lot as well—among other things, the administration is <a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2013/01/uc-administration-continues-to-grow.html">spending a lot more money on itself</a>. (Just the latest example: the Regents recently agreed to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-pay-20140919-story.html">give chancellors a 20 percent raise</a>.) This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive explanation, but to point out that when administrators talk about declining state funds what we should be asking them is what are they doing with all that extra money that’s rolling in.<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://universityprobe.org/2013/01/uc-management-bloat-updated/image001/" rel="attachment wp-att-1076"><img alt="image001" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1076" src="http://universityprobe.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/image001.png" height="467" width="624" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-state-funding-sleight-of-hand-some.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (d)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-1630715682395719829Fri, 07 Nov 2014 04:55:00 +00002014-11-16T23:38:37.546-08:00They want to raise tuition again The UC Regents want to hike tuition again. At their upcoming meeting, they are <a href="http://dailybruin.com/2014/11/05/uc-regents-to-vote-on-policy-to-raise-tuition-by-5-percent/">planning</a> to vote on a new policy that, if ratified, would make 5% annual tuition increases the default for the next five years. According to Napolitano, the tuition hikes (as much as $3,400 over five years) would go forward unless the state government increases UC's budget by amounts to be named later.<br /><br />The Regents are trying to preempt what was supposed to be a four-year tuition freeze (spanning 2012/13 through 2015/16). They are threatening to end what has been a brief span without tuition increases and to again make annual tuition hikes the new normal.<br /><br />The Regents' strategy is fairly evident. In announcing the new tuition policy only two weeks before their meeting, they are hoping to establish the policy before mass student and worker opposition can materialize. And in making the decision to hike tuition contingent upon state inaction, they are trying to redirect students' focus to <a href="http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Re-Elected-Governor-Jerry-Brown-Talks-Next-Four-Years-281727601.html">Sacramento</a>, and to create some ambiguity about when a tuition hike ultimately would happen, so as to prevent students from establishing a clear calendar of protest.<br /><br />More broadly, the Regents are trying to set themselves up for a win-win situation. Either students, workers, and our allies, through our collective actions and power, will be able to compel the state to increase UC's budget and to stave off hikes; or we won't, and the Regents will get their money anyway in the form of higher undergrad tuitions.<br /><br />We know from recent experience what higher tuitions would mean:<br /><a href="https://libcom.org/files/pamphlet%20debt%20pdf.pdf">More</a> debt, which <a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/245793689/Curtis-Marez-Seeing-in-the-Red-Looking-at-Student-Debt">falls</a> especially heavily on women and people of color.<br /><a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-uc-privatization-intensifies-class.html">Fewer</a> working class students and students of color <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-free-speech-movement-and-unfinished.html">enrolling</a> at the UCs.<br />More students exhausted from second, third, and fourth jobs.<br /><a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/10/free-speech-and-free-uc.html">Fewer </a>low-income students finishing college.<br /><a href="http://clearsighted.com/ucscfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/07_Meister3.pdf">A ripple effect </a>throughout the higher education system, pushing more working class students and students of color into fraudulent for-profit colleges. <br /><br />These are the stakes. This is why it is critical that each of us does what we can to prevent these tuition hikes from happening. And while the Regents are trying to surprise and disorient us, their plans to hike tuition will not succeed if students, workers, and our allies take sufficiently powerful collective actions in the coming weeks and months. We have the necessary capacities, political experience, and social bonds. We just have to use them.<br /><br />It starts with us showing up at the Regents' meeting in San Francisco on November 19th and 20th and calling against tuition hikes. Regardless of what happens at the meeting, and whether we are able to prevent the Regents from voting, a strong turnout, combined with actions and mass education on the campuses, will set the tone for the coming months and will give us confidence.<br /><br />A potential tuition hike is something that all students deserve to know about. Graduate student instructors and professors have a responsibility to discuss the potential hike in our classes, to give students time to talk together about how they would be affected by tuition hikes, to assure students that their participation in any actions will be seen favorably, and to provide students with relevant information and resources, including potentially the UC Student Association's <a href="http://ucsa.org/action-alerts/sign-our-petition/">petition</a> against fee hikes or some of the documents linked above. Students, for their part, can organize teach-ins in dorms, co-ops, and meetings, and can ask professors to make time for announcements about upcoming political actions at the beginning of classes.<br /><br />This kind of mass education is critically important. But it isn't enough. Only by acting collectively to interrupt business as usual on our campuses and throughout the state will we have the power to block tuition hikes. In taking collective action, students and workers can draw from past experiences. We might plan mass assemblies for the days surrounding the Regents' vote, as well as cascading building take-overs in the days after. We might take the opportunity at these assemblies to call for a student strike against tuition hikes for the winter quarter / spring semester.<br /><br />UCSA has already taken a strong position demanding tuition rollbacks; will they endorse and help build for the kinds of collective actions that will be required to realize this demand? Will our unions, co-ops, dorms, cultural organizations, student government parties, and other groups rise to the challenge to stop another round of proposed tuition hikes? It is up to each of us to push our organizations beyond where they've gone in the past, and to build bonds of struggle that are broad, powerful, and enduring enough to win.<br /><br />Here are some of the immediate next steps at Berkeley:<br /><br />-- Tuesday the 18th, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/672647662833736/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming">mass rally</a> and forum to challenge the fee hikes: 12:30 on Sproul.<br />-- Wednesday the 19th, students and workers from all the UCs are <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/908025175876397/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming">going to UCSF</a> to protest at the Regents meeting. We're encouraging people to go early in the morning, so that we can set up picket lines and potentially delay or cancel the meeting. You can sign up for space on a bus <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rAXT0Hcz5PhsG6YVs4xu6pGaEjbgOiByMP0maR_w0R0/viewform?c=0&amp;w=1">here</a>.<br />-- Also on Wednesday the 19th, there will be a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/585834101521605/?notif_t=plan_user_joined">general assembly</a> / update / planning next steps meeting at 5pm on Sproul.<br /><br />See you at the Regents' meeting. &nbsp; &nbsp; http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/11/they-want-to-raise-tuition-again.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-6151871922944252909Thu, 02 Oct 2014 23:38:00 +00002014-10-07T16:14:13.111-07:00After the Freeze: UC Privatization since 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KZ1YhVtf_pE/VC3hEl9wMeI/AAAAAAAAAqQ/foNd_4QUPXY/s1600/10661719_10101464372782002_6890884990892516581_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KZ1YhVtf_pE/VC3hEl9wMeI/AAAAAAAAAqQ/foNd_4QUPXY/s1600/10661719_10101464372782002_6890884990892516581_o.jpg" height="412" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><i>Talk delivered by Amanda Armstrong at the Oct. 1 Berkeley Faculty Association panel, "The Operation of the Machine: UC Then and Now."</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">I’m going to be talking today about the operation of the UC machine <i>then</i>, versus its operation <i>now</i>. But not <i>then</i> as in 1965. More like <i>then</i> as in 2009. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">I still have <a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2013/02/managements-backup-plans.html">vivid memories</a> from fall 2009—a semester when students, workers, and professors built assemblies, walked out of classes, and took direct actions to challenge austerity measures being imposed by the newly-appointed UC President, Mark Yudof. These austerity measures included a 32% tuition increase, furloughs for faculty and staff, and layoffs of over 2,000 service workers across the UC system. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">At one of the first walkout planning meetings I attended that fall, people were talking about something called the “<a href="http://cucfa.org/news/tuition_bonds.php">Meister report</a>,” which I later learned was named after its author, UC Santa Cruz Professor Bob Meister. The Report talked about how UC administrators were able to take out low-interest construction bonds because they essentially pledged to Moody’s and other rating agencies that they would raise student tuition if necessary to pay back the bonds. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The Meister Report challenged the official story of the 2009 tuition hikes, which claimed that the hikes were necessary given the state’s defunding of public education. The report suggested that, in hiking tuition so drastically, UC administrators weren’t only making up for state defunding – they were also showing bond rating agencies that they had the political will and capacity to deliver steep fee hikes if necessary. And they were protecting their ability to carry on with construction projects, even if this meant trimming funds for basic instruction and saddling students with more debt. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">In this way, the Meister Report opened up questions about how and in whose interests UC administrators were managing the money they did have, and about why so many construction projects were moving forward even at a moment of financial crisis. 2009 was thus defined by the <a href="http://wewanteverything.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/communique-from-an-absent-future/">politicization</a> both of UC real estate development and of rising student debt levels; it was also a period of <a href="http://labornotes.org/2009/09/multi-union-coalition-uc-strikes-back-devastating-cuts">significant political</a> <a href="http://libcom.org/library/after-fall-communiques-occupied-california">mobilization</a>. Even so, we did not succeed in stopping the fee hikes, or otherwise reversing austerity on a large scale. There were some minor victories though: at Berkeley, some of the demands of those who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISZrR7qE-Oc">occupied Wheeler Hall</a> on November 20<sup>th</sup> were realized. The University renewed its essentially no-cost lease to the Rochdale co-op, and a number of custodial workers who had been laid off were rehired. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The larger political victory came in 2011 and 2012. Facing another round of steep fee hikes, students <a href="http://www.reclamationsjournal.org/blog/?ha_exhibit=writings-of-campus-occupy-anti-privatization-movements-fall-2011">linked their organizing</a> against privatization to the larger occupy movement. We set up encampments on the campuses, and, after acts of police violence, held massive strikes at Berkeley and Davis. The movement broadened through the spring, with people in all sectors of education marching to the capitol building in Sacramento and occupying it, in order to build support for progressive taxation and for the refunding of public education and social services. Ultimately, <a href="http://labornotes.org/2012/03/california-unions-compromise-millionaires-tax">a ballot initiative</a> for progressive taxation <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/prop-30-passes-california-education_n_2087931.html">passed</a> and, with guarantees of more state funding, the regents agreed to freeze in-state tuition for at least four years. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Since the political victory of 2012, some things have changed. In the aftermath of the in-state tuition freeze, the priorities and practices of UC administrators have mutated somewhat, which, I want to suggest, presents an altered political context, and some ambiguities, for those of us interested in challenging University privatization. To begin to get a sense of this new terrain, we can look at recent bond rating reports and UC financial documents. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">This year, two rating agencies, <a href="https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-University-of-California-to-Aa2-and-assigns-Aa2--PR_294817">Moodys</a> and <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fitch-downgrades-university-california-general-213100854.html">Fitch</a>, downgraded the UC’s bond rating. In explaining their decision, Moodys noted that, while “</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.0pt;">The university's debt doubled over the last eight years,…. Political and public scrutiny of the rising cost of higher education will constrain UC's ability to grow net tuition revenue.” They continued: “The university's relatively low cost compared to other market leading universities and expansive geographic draw of students help offset these pressures.” In other words, UC administrators aren’t politically able to raise enough tuition revenue to offset their debts, but at least they can make money on out-of-state tuition, and maybe sometime soon they’ll be able to raise in-state tuition as well. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.0pt;">These bond rating reports, in addition to vindicating Bob Meister’s analysis from 2009, help clarify and explain a couple strategies recently undertaken by UC administrators—strategies that are spelled out fairly explicitly in <a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/241743125/2014-UC-Financial-Documents">UC’s financial documents</a>. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">First</i></b>: In the absence of a political context conducive to across-the-board tuition hikes, administrators have nevertheless tried to increase tuition and fee revenues by admitting more out of state students and by increasing other costs students have to pay (including for housing and healthcare). And <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Second</i></b>: In an attempt to decrease their debt levels, administrators have begun to aggressively promote the privatization of development. Instead of generally taking on debt to construct buildings themselves, they are now often working to rent out university-owned land to developers who are willing to build, and in some cases manage, dorms, labs, and other facilities. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.0pt;">In what follows, I will discuss these two administrative strategies, as well as some of their possible political implications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">First</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">, on UC administrators’ recent attempts to salvage tuition and fee income. This really varies by campus, and I’m going to focus mostly on Berkeley. Following the crisis of 2009, Berkeley administrators started actively recruiting out of state and international students, who paid more in tuition. In the last couple years, as the cost of out-of-state tuition has risen to almost three times that of in-state tuition, administrators continued to admit progressively more out-of-state students. <a href="http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/04/18/campus-announces-2013-14-freshman-admissions-decisions/">Last year</a>, a third of new admits came from outside of California.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><a href="http://studentunionofmichigan.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/unpacking-the-myths-of-financial-aid/">Like other public universities</a>, Berkeley has started “leveraging” student aid to compete to enroll higher-income, out-of-state students. The new <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://financialaid.berkeley.edu/middle-class-access-plan">Middle Class Access Plan</a></i>, the cutoff for which was just raised to include those from families making up to $150,000, leverages relatively small grants in exchange for the higher return of out-of-state tuition revenues. Berkeley has also <a href="http://www.housing.berkeley.edu/livingatcal/springrates.html">selectively</a> <a href="http://www.housing.berkeley.edu/livingatcal/rates.html">increased</a> housing costs since 2012, raising rents dramatically on the most desirable housing options, while keeping other rents relatively flat. This follows a period of dramatic rent hikes; between <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/UC-Berkeley-s-lack-of-services-leaves-many-2923526.php">2001</a> and <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2011/09/21/campus-room-and-board-among-costliest/">2011</a>, room and board rates nearly doubled. Finally, as part of the restructuring of SHIP in 2013, Berkeley <a href="http://uhs.berkeley.edu/home/news/berkeleyship.shtml">raised healthcare premiums</a> by thirteen percent for undergraduates and twenty percent for graduate students—a cost increase that mostly falls on grad students in professional schools, whose tuition rates have also continued to increase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Thinking politically about this situation, it’s worth saying initially that a politics organized around the principles of racial justice, class equality, and affordable public education remain critical. Since 2009, the admission and enrollment rates of black students have <a href="http://legacy-its.ucop.edu/uwnews/stat/">declined</a> <a href="http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/freshman-admission-data-2014/">even further</a> <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23516740/affirmative-action-ban-at-uc-15-years-later">than</a> in the immediate aftermath of Proposition 209. Over this period, the class composition of the student body has also been shifting; there are <a href="http://www.cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/publications/docs/ROPS-JD-GT-PoorRich-10-8-08.pdf">relatively</a> <a href="http://diversity.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/UCB-Ethnic-and-Income-Diversity.pdf">fewer</a> <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2014/04/03/uc-college-board-partner-recruit-low-income-students/">low-income students</a> but significantly more from the highest income brackets. Since 2001, the costs borne by all students have continued to rise, even for those receiving the maximum support from Pell Grants and the Blue and Gold plan. For these and other reasons, it’s critical that we continue to target the race and class exclusions that are only becoming more entrenched in the admissions process. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">But I think we also should be thoughtful about how politically to address the fact that the <a href="http://hechingerreport.org/content/residents-crowded-college-state-foreign-students_16363/">bulk of new tuition</a> and fee revenues has been coming from out-of-state and international students, who now make up a greater percentage of the student body and have the potential to take on a greater role—as either protagonists or antagonists—of any student movement against privatization that might reemerge. Perhaps advocating for across the board rent and tuition reductions, including for out-of-state tuition, would be a generally compelling way to address affordability issues, which would push back as well against UC administrators’ post-2012 strategy for increasing tuition and fee revenues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> second </b>post-2012 administrative strategy concerns the privatization of development. In June 2012, right around the time the Regents announced that they would freeze in-state tuition if Proposition 30 passed, Berkeley housing administrators <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2012/06/05/uc-berkeley-to-collaborate-with-private-developers-to-build-student-housing/">announced</a> that, in order to limit their construction-related debt, they would begin seeking out private developers to build new dorms. This kind of privatization of dorm construction had been happening for some time at Irvine and Davis. And Berkeley had done something similar with the Blum Center, as well as in partnering with BP to fund the construction of the Energy Biosciences Institute building on Hearst and Oxford. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Just in the last couple of years though, the privatization of construction has significantly intensified across the UC system. The UC Office of the President recently posted on their website <a href="http://www.ucop.edu/real-estate-services/_files/documents/ppp_at_uc.pdf">documents</a> outlining the various partnerships, or rent agreements, the campuses are looking to make with private developers. At Berkeley, housing administrators announced that the Martinez commons would be the final dorm funded and built in-house, and they recently <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2014/05/05/negotiations-redevelopment-bowles-hall-underway/">leased</a> Bowles Hall to a private entity interested in redeveloping the building. They are <a href="http://www.cp.berkeley.edu/reso/RFQ/RFQ%20For%20Developer-Channing%20Ellsworth-1-12-12-Published.pdf">working now</a> on finding a developer interested in building and managing a new dorm on Ellsworth and Channing. The Berkeley rent stabilization board has <a href="http://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Rent_Stabilization_Board/Level_3_-_General/7.a.4_Letter%20to%20U.C.%20Berkeley%20re%20student%20housing.pdf">expressed concern</a> that such privately developed and managed dorms could further drive up student rents, especially when other privately-run dorms, such as the newly-constructed <a href="http://www.berkeleymet.com/rent-now/">Metropolitan</a> on Dana and Durant, charge rents higher than the cost of room and board. Construction workers’ unions have also raised concerns about the fact that, unlike building projects on campus, these development projects <a href="http://www.ucop.edu/real-estate-services/_files/documents/ppp_at_uc.pdf">won’t be bound</a> by state prevailing wage laws, and so could involve more dangerous and exploitative building practices. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">UC Berkeley administrators have also been working to make arrangements with private firms for the development of portions of the Gill Tract, in Albany. So far, the efforts of <a href="http://occupythefarm.org/">Occupy the Farm</a> have stalled this development, and have put on the agenda the conversion of the Gill tract into space for community-based farming, research, and education. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Berkeley administrators, including the <a href="http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/12/17/vice-chancellor-for-real-estate/">newly appointed</a> Vice Chancellor of real estate Robert Lalanne, are also working on <a href="http://vcaf.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/02.06.14%20AFLG%20meeting_0.pdf">coordinating</a> a massive development project on 109 acres of land owned by the University in Richmond Bay. They are saying this project will involve private construction and management of some of the research facilities, and recently published an “<a href="http://www.cp.berkeley.edu/RFQ%20Infrastructure%20Master%20Plan%20FINAL%20-%20RFS%201-30-14%20(3).pdf">Infrastructure Master Plan</a>,” outlining ways for private companies to buy space and influence at the Richmond Bay campus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">A coalition of labor and community groups has issued a number of <a href="http://calprogressivecoalition.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/cal-disorientation-guide-20141.pdf">demands</a> around this development project including the payment of prevailing wages to construction workers, the promise that all service workers employed in the facilities will be represented by AFSCME, the opening up of space for community-based and community-driven research, that those profiting from the project help fund affordable housing in Richmond, and that formerly incarcerated people be hired for some of the construction and other work set to occur. These are demands that students and workers on campus can help amplify. And in general, I think it’s imperative that we respond to UC’s efforts to privatize construction by building relations of solidarity with local communities and making the case for a kind of public knowledge making.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">I can imagine some ambiguities and difficulties that might accompany such a project, aside from just the myriad practical challenges of coalition building and of building power sufficient to interrupt administrative agendas. It might also be hard to know when to oppose new development outright and when to try and direct it to less damaging, more accessible and public-oriented ends. And there’s a question as well about federal research money, which is public in one sense but is often linked to military or other state interests. In a <a href="http://vcaf.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/02.06.14%20AFLG%20meeting_0.pdf">power-point presentation</a> last spring, Robert Lalanne, the Vice Chancellor of real estate, noted that drone development and testing is part of the research agenda for Richmond Bay. Given the entailments of much federal research, how can we envision and struggle for a kind of public knowledge making that is resolutely anti-militarist?</span></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1937</o:Words> <o:Characters>11045</o:Characters> <o:Company>University of California Berkeley</o:Company> <o:Lines>92</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>22</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>13564</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Any renewed movement against university privatization will need to work through these ambiguities and difficulties. But if the last six years have shown us anything, it’s that concerted action on the part of students, workers, and instructors can fundamentally shift the operations of the university, and can block the worst effects of university privatization, if not reverse this process outright. So there is reason to try, and to hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/10/after-freeze-uc-privatization-since-2012.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (a)9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-6059879134839907465Wed, 01 Oct 2014 21:47:00 +00002014-10-01T14:47:27.947-07:00UC Irvine Chancellor Gillman gets on the Civility Bandwagon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="_4-u3 _5cla"><div class="clearfix"><div><h2 class="_5clb">Free Speech and Civility</h2></div></div><div class="mts _50f8"><a class="uiLinkSubtle" href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/uci-campus-organizations-core/free-speech-and-civility/837438072932983">October 1, 2014 at 10:17am</a><span class="timelineUnitContainer"></span></div><div class="_5k3v _5k3w clearfix"><div>To the Anteater community:<br /><br />As we prepare to start an exciting new academic year I want to share some thoughts on free speech and civility on college campuses. I deeply believe that it is possible to have robust free speech while still being civil to one another and treating each other with mutual respect.<br /><br />Freedom of speech is a bedrock value of our constitutional system and at the core of this university’s central mission. Courts have recognized that First Amendment principles “acquire a special significance in the university setting, where the free and unfettered interplay of competing views is essential to the institution’s educational mission.” The University of California is also committed to upholding and preserving principles of academic freedom, which for the faculty comprises freedom of inquiry and research, freedom of teaching, and freedom of expression and publication, with related duties of professional care and the requirements of competent scholarship.<br /><br />It is in the nature of freedom of speech that we will sometimes be exposed to viewpoints, arguments, or forms of expression that make us uncomfortable or even offend us. It is in precisely these circumstances that free speech often plays its most vital function, especially in an educational context. Throughout history speech that challenges conventional wisdom has been a driving force for progress. Speech that makes us uncomfortable may force us to reconsider our own strongly held views – in fact, a willingness to reconsider strongly held views is one of the reasons why people pursue higher education. Hearing offensive views provides opportunities for those sentiments to be engaged and rebutted.<br /><br />Of course, freedom of speech is not and cannot be absolute. Threats, harassment, “fighting words,” incitement, obscenity, and defamatory speech are categories of speech that are not protected. Freedom of speech does not mean a right to say anything at any place and any time; there can and must be restrictions on the time, place, and manner of speech, but the campus is committed to ensuring the availability of places for speeches and protests.<br /><br />Beyond the issue of what one has the right to do is the much more interesting and important question of what is the right thing to do.<br /><br />We live during a period of increased division and incivility in our politics and public discourse. It is of value to society if there is a place where people decide that they will come together in the spirit of inquiry and discovery, and will work together to embrace the virtues of a scholarly community: rigorous inquiry, evidence-based reasoning, logical argumentation, experimentation, fair-minded assessments of competing perspectives, balanced judgment, ongoing skepticism, and a willingness to reassess one’s perspective in light of new evidence and arguments.<br /><br />These beliefs and practices – these scholarly norms – are inextricably linked to other values, including a genuine desire to engage competing perspectives and learn from those who have had different experiences or who hold different views, and a commitment to resolving (or at least better understanding) disagreement through reasoned and sustained conversation, debate, and the acquisition of new knowledge.<br /><br />If our commitment to freedom and democracy leads us to defend the rights of free speech, our commitment to scholarly inquiry and education leads us to create norms of civility. We as an academic community cannot do our distinctive work in the world without establishing norms and practices that enable us to learn from each other in an atmosphere of positive engagement and mutual respect. When we work through our differences we should do so in a way that sheds more light than heat.<br /><br />My hope and goal is that this year, and every year, all of us will remain civil to one another, especially when we passionately disagree. We strive for this because such an environment is conducive to sharing and critically examining knowledge and values, and to furthering the search for wisdom – the very purposes we sought to pursue when we decided to join this remarkable community.<br /><br />I wish you all an enlightening year.<br /><br /><span><i>Sent by Howard Gillman, UC Irvine Chancellor</i></span><br /><i>On Wednesday, October 1, 2014</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>Please stop by the Campus Organizations Poster Room for a Free Speech Brochure brought to you by Office of Campus Organizations, Office of Student Conduct, and Student Affairs.</i></div></div></div></div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/10/uc-irvine-chancellor-gillman-gets-on.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (c)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-6428188511936171961Fri, 12 Sep 2014 19:23:00 +00002014-09-12T12:23:07.673-07:00Dirks Just Won't Shut Up About Civility, Seems Surprised We Care<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">From: <span class="gmail_sendername">Nicholas Dirks Chancellor</span><br />Date: <span class="gI">Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 12:08 PM</span><br />Subject: Civility and Free Speech<br />To: "Faculty; Staff; Students"<br /><br /> <br /><div>Every fall for the last many years, we have issued statements concerning the virtue of civility on campus. This principle is one of several that Berkeley staff, students, faculty, and alumni themselves developed and today regard as “fundamental to our mission of teaching, research and public service.”&nbsp;&nbsp;To quote further from our “principles of community”: “We are committed to ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views held by our varied communities. We respect the differences as well as the commonalities that bring us together and call for civility and respect in our personal interactions.” For a full list of these stated principles, please see&nbsp;<a href="http://berkeley.edu/about/principles.shtml" target="_blank">http://berkeley.edu/about/<wbr></wbr>principles.shtml</a>.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>In this year’s email, I extended this notion of civility to another crucial element of Berkeley’s identity, namely our unflinching commitment to free speech — a principle this campus will spend much of this fall celebrating in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>My message was intended to re-affirm values that have for years been understood as foundational to this campus community. As I also noted in my message, these values can exist in tension with each other, and there are continuing and serious debates about fundamental issues related to them. In invoking my hope that commitments to civility and to freedom of speech can complement each other, I did not mean to suggest any constraint on freedom of speech, nor did I mean to compromise in any way our commitment to academic freedom, as defined both by this campus and the American Association of University Professors. (For the AAUP’s Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, please see&nbsp;<a href="http://www.aaup.org/issues/academic-freedom" target="_blank">http://www.aaup.org/<wbr></wbr>issues/academic-freedom</a>.)</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>I did, however, express my conviction that in the ongoing debates on campus about these and other issues we might collectively see the value of real engagement on divisive issues across different perspectives and opinions. By “real engagement” I mean openness to, and respect for, the different viewpoints that make up our campus community. I remain hopeful that our debates will be both productive and robust not only to further mutual understanding but also for the sake of our overriding intellectual mission.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Sincerely,</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Nicholas B. Dirks</div><div>Chancellor</div><div>&nbsp;</div><em>If you are a manager who supervises Cal employees without email access, please circulate this information to all.</em><br /> <br /><strong>Please do not reply to this message</strong><br /> </div>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/09/dirks-just-wont-shut-up-about-civility.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (c)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-2456409825317801389Wed, 10 Sep 2014 16:22:00 +00002014-09-14T15:59:13.393-07:00The End of Free Speech: On the Civility of Nicholas DirksNick Dirks took the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Free Speech Movement to maneuver for control of the campus as political space. His <a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/09/from-free-speech-movement-to-reign-of.html">“civility letter,”</a> as incoherent and historically inept a document as one could imagine, has already been well-diagnosed by various sources including <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-order-of-civility.html">Remaking the University</a>, <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/08/berkeleys-faux-free-speech/">Counterpunch</a>, and here at <a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/09/policing-civility.html">ReclaimUC</a>. That lattermost assessment was particularly clear-minded in showing that free speech has been not an ideal but a site of political struggle. While paying it lip-service in the abstract, university administrations (and not these alone) have as a matter of custom and practice sought to curtail the concrete use of free speech, and further concrete struggles have been required to preserve it. <br /><br />Dirks sets up a series of oppositions the boundaries of which we must attend with vigor and zeal, including — in the most bizarre moment — that “between free speech and political advocacy.” It’s one of the great spit-take moments of administrative palaver, splitting the difference between non sequitur and nonsense. It makes your brain freeze. My anonymous colleague here offers a pretty sensible explication of a pretty crazy sentence: to understand it as a rhetorical strategy, not a truth claim. <br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I don’t think he’s stupid. I think he wants to create a campus climate where we accept that “free speech and political advocacy” are two different things, and where we fight over the difference. I think he’s smart enough to understand that political advocacy is explicitly protected speech—that it’s very specifically the form of protected speech which both the Free Speech Movement and the First Amendment specifically defend—and that this rhetorical gesture nudges his audience towards accepting indefensible trade-offs…to make it seem natural that free speech means the freedom to say things that are not prohibited. </blockquote>I think this is largely correct. If I take any distance from it herein, it is only because I wish to take some distance from free speech itself — or, rather, from free speech as such. The extant rebukes to Dirks’ absurdity are quite effective at setting forth how the civility standard serves to undermine the very free speech it purports to buttress. The risk of these accounts is that, taking up an immanent critique of the letter’s logic (and by extension <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/08/25/u-illinois-officials-defend-decision-deny-job-scholar-documents-show-lobbying">the logic of the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana</a> and <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/civility-israel-lobbys-new-weapon-against-free-speech-us-campuses">all the other mongers of repressive civility</a>), the critiques leave free speech as the ultimate horizon of debate and struggle. I worry that this plays into what is for Dirks et al. a broader and more pernicious strategy, both rhetorical and practical — regarding not only what counts as free speech, but what free speech itself <i>is</i>, both within and without the university. <br /><br />The strategy is to treat free speech as an absolute end. In this understanding, free speech is itself both fruit and proof of freedom <i>tout court</i>. Consequently, we must at all times contemplate what might be necessary <i>as means</i> to preserve free speech <i>as end</i>. It turns out, via the peculiar pseudologic of power, that the means to this end include prohibiting certain speech. And this turns out to be a doubly desirable role for the university administration: not only is it authorized to curtail expression, but it gets to do so in the name of an abstract principle, a general ideal of social existence, divorced from any particular antagonism. In this vision the defense of free speech is a neutral and noble pursuit; it is the very opposite of taking a side, and thus of any sort of advocacy. Even if they are doing it wrong, Dirks et al. are still endeavoring to do the right thing. <br /><br />This is the world stood on its head. Free speech <i>is</i> side-taking. The very reason we value free speech is because it is a means: an instrument and a condition of possibility for political struggle. Free speech is not a virtue in and of itself any more than is an umbrella. Or perhaps we might come to enjoy umbrellas for themselves, as an aesthetic or sensuous matter, were there to be no more inclement weather. Alas, it continues to rain, and worse. <br /><br />Which is to say that there is an underlying fantasy to the position fomented by Nick Dirks. The only situation in which one would treat free speech as an end would be one in which there were no fundamental problems: no iniquities, immiseration, exploitation. No need for free speech as means. So we might say Dirks is speaking from the position of campus-as-utopia, a campus of nothing but speech, where the sun always shines and all other issues have been resolved happily for all. A campus wherein there was no privatized public education, no massive debt- and labor-loads for students, no shitty working conditions for campus workers, no cops being called in to beat or pepper-spray students and faculty into the hospital. No struggle over BDS, no systematic racism, no burying of rape statistics and accompanying leniency for perpetrators — struggles in which the administration is an aggressive antagonist, a side. <br /><br />In this Panglossian vision, the absolute deference to civility makes perfect sense. Except, in one of those funny turns, there would be no need for such deference. There would be nothing about which to be uncivil. <br /><br />This paradox is an expression of, among other things, the character of our moment. For most of history, it has been perfectly well understood that “free speech” and “political advocacy” offer not an opposition but an identity: they are names for side-taking in real antagonisms. In what situation, then, do they seem to stand apart from each other? Necessarily in a situation where there is something at stake, something that power needs urgently to dissimulate. It is when side-taking lurches toward political crisis that power will endeavor to sequester free speech from that taking of sides. <br /><br />In this regard, the Dirks letter is not a historian’s betrayal of history, but <i>a sign of the present as one of political possibility</i> — and, in particular, a sign of the significance of the confrontation over Palestine, Israel, and the fissure on campuses and elsewhere between fundraising practices and liberation struggles. In this and accompanying fights, free speech will be only one of the means we will need at our disposal. http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-end-of-free-speech-on-civility-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reclaim UC!)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243675294290376991.post-1075501939852203948Sat, 06 Sep 2014 21:31:00 +00002014-09-06T14:31:32.623-07:00Policing Civility<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>This guest post is an uncivil retort which <a href="http://coreyrobin.com/2014/08/23/more-than-3000-scholars-boycott-the-university-of-illinois/">demeans a viewpoint</a>, written by an academic whose desire to remain anonymous is a function of the free speech climate that people like Nicholas Dirks and Phyllis Wise have created.</i></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">“Until 1959 Telegraph Avenue extended through the campus up to Sather Gate. Tables were stationed there, rallies assembled, and all types of literature sold and distributed. With the construction of the Student Union building, however, Telegraph Avenue ended at Bancroft Way. At this new gate to the campus, the traditional activities continued. <b>The Bancroft and Telegraph sidewalk was generally regarded as being city property</b>. Groups received table permits from the city of Berkeley authorities. In fact, the Dean's Office referred questions on the use of the area to the city police department. <b>On September 14, Dean Towle informed the heads of all student organizations that the Bancroft and Telegraph sidewalk was in fact University property and that all University rules would henceforth be applied</b>. No tables or speeches would be allowed. Only informational literature could be distributed; no advocacy was allowed”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">--</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt4s"></a></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><i><a href="http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt4s2012m1;NAAN=13030&amp;doc.view=frames&amp;chunk.id=div00005&amp;toc.id=div00004&amp;brand=calisphere">The Berkeley Free Speech Controversy</a> </i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><a href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/09/from-free-speech-movement-to-reign-of.html">From the beginning</a>, an interpellation, a hail:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Dear Campus Community,</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Of course, addressing the “campus community” is simply what he is doing, just a very formulaic opening, but that formula reflects the framework through which everything that comes after it is implied. For there to be a “campus community,” there also has to be a not-campus community, people who are outside the campus. But how a public university comes to have an outside to itself is an interesting question; how does a Californian become a outsider to a public Californian university? As the university becomes less and less “Californian,” in fact—turning to out-of-state students as cash cows—the terms on which the university is construed a community also changes: you have to buy your way in. Instead of getting a free education as a function of being a Californian (as it was, in the 1960s), you become a member of the community by purchasing your place. And one can be expelled from a community; if it’s a body of people, it’s also a place.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">This Fall marks the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, which made the right to free expression of ideas a signature issue for our campus, and indeed for universities around the world. Free speech is the cornerstone of our nation and society – which is precisely why the founders of the country made it the First Amendment to the Constitution. For a half century now, our University has been a symbol and embodiment of that ideal.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Between the beginning and end of this paragraph, Dirks transforms a bitter, festering sore of an unresolved conflict into a unifying principle, using the power of intellectual dishonesty and bad faith. To be blunt: fifty years ago, the university administration censored its students, unreservedly and without hesitation. Student groups had begun to take part in civil rights agitation, and when the campus threatened to become a site where students and the community at large would do politics together—and when segregated businesses told the university to keep its students in line—the university told its students to sit down and shut up. Students who disobeyed were “suspended indefinitely”—a punishment which the university had to invent on the spot—and people like Jack Weinberg, who had recently graduated, were turned over to the police. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">“At about 11:45 a.m., Dean Van Houten and a campus policeman approach one of the tables (CORE) at which about a dozen persons are sitting. Jack Weinberg, a recent Cal graduate, is told he is violating University rules and is placed under arrest when he refuses to leave the table. Students spontaneously sit down around the police car which has arrived on the plaza and block the car from removing Mr. Weinberg. Mario Savio, head of Friends of SNCC, removes his shoes and begins to address a crowd of over a thousand, from atop the police car. He discusses the position of the united front and the injustice of the Administration's response to their free speech demands. Many others also make speeches. The protest is extended by sitting-in in Sproul Hall.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">--</span></i><a href="http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt4s2012m1;NAAN=13030&amp;doc.view=frames&amp;chunk.id=div00005&amp;toc.id=div00004&amp;brand=calisphere"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The Berkeley Free Speech Controversy</span></i></a><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"> </span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The founding event of the Free Speech Movement, the reason we remember it, and the reason Nicholas Dirks’ predecessors were prevented from censoring their students—as they had wanted to—is that students said no. They prevented the cops from expelling the “outside agitators” by putting their bodies on the machine, etc. They refused to allow the police to patrol the borders of their “campus community”; they made clear that the cops were the outsiders, and that Jack Weinberg—and other civil rights organizers—were part of the campus community. They won. Their disobedience prevented Nicholas Dirks’ predecessors from stifling the kinds of political activism that the local business community objected to: anti-segregation activism. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Let me underscore this with bulletpoints: </span></span></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The Free Speech Movement began with students organizing to oppose segregation, being aggressively blocked by the administration, rejecting its authority to censor them, and winning. </span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The university administration was on the wrong side of history, and got taught a lesson by its students. </span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">That lesson is this: when power tells you to sit down and shut up, the best answer is to tell power to go fuck itself.</span></span></li></ul><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The problem with Dirks’ letter, up to this point, is that the university has been a consistent site of politicized repression. To the extent that the victories of the Free Speech Movement have been maintained, it has <i>always</i> been by students pushing back against administration efforts to police and control.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">This letter is <i>also</i>an effort to police and control.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">As we honor this turning point in our history, it is important that we recognize the broader social context required in order for free speech to thrive. For free speech to have meaning it must not just be tolerated, it must also be heard, listened to, engaged and debated. </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">“Free Speech” is not a delicate flower that needs compost and sunlight and watering; “free speech” needs the absence of repression. That’s it. For “free speech to thrive,” you need the administrators not to call the police on its students. You need people to know that having an opinion about an unpopular social issue—say, opposing the Israeli occupation, or opposing racial segregation in Mississippi, or for that matter the privatization of public universities—will not result in their being punished for their wrong-think. And if “free speech” can only thrive when it is “heard, listened to, engaged and debated,” Dirks and his administration have some soul-searching to do about how they will hear, listen, engage, and debate their students. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">“Representatives of the Free Speech Movement have requested time to speak before the Regents Friday to present their side of the controversy. The Regents will decide today whether the "quite crowded" agenda will permit time for such a presentation, according to a University spokesman. The Free Speech Movement announced yesterday it has sent a telegram to Governor Edmund Brown requesting an appointment with the Board of Regents at their meeting tomorrow. "If this request is denied we must consider alternate action," the telegram states.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">--</span></i><a href="http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt4s2012m1;NAAN=13030&amp;doc.view=frames&amp;chunk.id=div00005&amp;toc.id=div00004&amp;brand=calisphere"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The Berkeley Free Speech Controversy</span></i></a><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"> </span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The next passage is where Dirks transitions from bad-faith concern trolling towards his ultimate destination, incoherence masking a threat:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Yet this is easier said than done, for the boundaries between protected and unprotected speech, between free speech and political advocacy, between the campus and the classroom, between debate and demagoguery, between freedom and responsibility, have never been fully settled. As a consequence, when issues are inherently divisive, controversial and capable of arousing strong feelings, the commitment to free speech and expression can lead to division and divisiveness that undermine a community’s foundation. </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">In this passage, Dirks asserts that “division and divisiveness” are threats to “a community’s foundation,” a rhetorical snake-pit that we will need to backtrack to understand. In the first paragraph he described how </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">“Free speech is the cornerstone of our nation and society – which is precisely why the founders of the country made it the First Amendment to the Constitution.” </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">At best, he’s constructed a tautology: free speech can lead to divisiveness which can undermine the cornerstone of our society, a society whose founders founded on free speech. Which, er, so wait: free speech is the foundation but free speech can put free speech in peril, so that’s why free speech can’t be free. Some kinds of free speech are more free than others and freedom isn’t free, I guess. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">At best, then, this is just tautological nonsense. At worst, it’s an effort to define what kinds of speech are allowed to be free, and which kinds of speech have to be suppressed, in the name of free speech. Which one it is depends on how stupid you think Nicholas Dirks is. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">I don’t think he’s stupid. I think he wants to create a campus climate where we accept that “free speech and political advocacy” are two different things, and where we fight over the difference. I think he’s smart enough to understand that political advocacy is explicitly protected speech—that it’s very specifically the form of protected speech which both the Free Speech Movement and the First Amendment specifically defend—and that this rhetorical gesture nudges his audience towards accepting indefensible trade-offs, to make it seem natural that you free speech means the freedom to say things that are not prohibited (because they’re political advocacy, demagoguery, irresponsible, or something else). It’s the same slight of hand as when National Security hawks tell us that there is a trade-off between freedom and security: what they mean is that we have to have less freedom, because security. <i>Don’t you know there’s a war on? </i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Dirks seems to think there is a war on:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">This fall, like every fall, there will be no shortage of issues to animate and engage us all. Our capacity to maintain that delicate balance between communal interests and free expression, between openness of thought and the requirements and disciplines of academic knowledge, will be tested anew.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The community needs you to express yourself less freely. The disciplines of academic knowledge require you to be less open in your thought. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Issues will arise to engage and animate you; remember, your ability to dis-engage and dis-animate will be on the test, so study hard.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Specifically, we can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility. Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas. In this sense, free speech and civility are two sides of a single coin – the coin of open, democratic society.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Is there anything more disrespectful than a letter from the chancellor expressing such a raft of poorly thought-through, nakedly dishonest, and intellectually bankrupt ideas? Does this make you feel respected?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">A few years ago, students gathered on the Mario Savio Steps of Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, and were told to disperse, and then <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ">beaten by police</a> when they did not. At UC Davis, of course, they were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4">pepper sprayed</a>. At UC Riverside, they were shot with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT9VOYR7cMo">rubber bullets</a>. Does this make you feel safe?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Insofar as we wish to honor the ideal of Free Speech, therefore, we should do so by exercising it graciously. This is true not just of political speech on Sproul Plaza, but also in our everyday interactions with each other – in the classroom, in the office, and in the lab.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">On its own, this letter is just an obnoxiously whiggish mis-telling of campus history. One would have expected that a historian would be reluctant to put his name on this garbage, but of course he’s not really a historian anymore—he’s a university chancellor. His job is not to say things that make a damned bit of sense; his job is to keep the people who matter happy.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">This letter also does not happen in a vacuum. When he talks about the importance of civility, we recall that Steven Salaita has been fired for failing to be civil, gracious, and respectful. Nicholas Dirks’ predecessor defended police violence against student protesters by saying they were <a href="http://workwithoutdread.blogspot.com/2011/11/not-non-violent-civil-disobedience.html">“not non-violent”</a> and Dirks still hasn’t quite reached that level of dishonest ingenuity. But this letter demonstrates that he’s working on it.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/PhFvZRT7Ds0" width="420"></iframe></span>http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/09/policing-civility.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (d)1